19 ms·

Deschooling Society (1970)

201 points by minerjoe 6y ago

Jash_Keyo 6y ago
I read Deschooling Society after taking a job at a school that is modeled after The Sudbury Valley School in MA. I agree with the critique about the design and function of school in our society, and think that democratic self directed education is a viable starting point for a future educative system. At the school I work at, we have created a democratic community that is focused on learning as opposed to teaching. Kids are able to learn whatever they would like without interference or coercion. The rules and limitations are decided by the community according to democratic principles. It is the best example of a functional educational environment whose goal is true education that I have encountered so far. I would also recommend people check out "Energy and Equity", I was impressed and influenced by the assertion that energy consumption is an important window to understanding class and society. The idea that we could have chosen to increase all human's speed to 20mph, but have instead allowed a small minority to travel at 70 mph, and an even smaller minority to travel at nearly 600 mph, has deeply influenced my view of structural inequality and violence.
minerjoe 6y ago
"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question. In these essays, I will show that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery."
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  Wow is that on the nose.
- tharne 6y ago
  The amount truth in that short passage is mind-blowing.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them You wish they knew but they don't. The kids, especially the poor ones, want worksheets, not problems. They want to pass but not learn. They want a degree without the competence. They want a job without possibility of advancement and if you don't provide that they resent you because you are in the way.
  - dbspin 6y ago
    You're describing the Nth generation in a hopeless environment, not children in general. This is an encultured attitude, not an innate one. Illich's point, and one born out by learning research is that the desire to learn, to gain knowledge and mastery for its own sake - is innate to such an extent that it can actually be diminished by extrinsic rewards. All children share this.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      Complete agreement about the hopeless environment. My point was that the enculturation works extremely reliably. I have not met a single student who questioned or rejected the culture. It is dejecting, and you despise the kids for that.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > I have not met a single student who questioned or rejected the culture. Both as a student myself and later as a long-term sub in a high school for a while in a poor district, I met lots of students who rejected whatever you might want to (rightly or wrongly) characterize as “the culture”, including many who adapted to what they saw as the incentives in the system while still rejecting the culture and attitudes they perceived as setting those incentives.
motohagiography 6y ago
Illich's concept of a "Radical Monopoly," is also immensely relevant to internet platforms. Radical monopoly is a concept defined by philosopher and author Ivan Illich in his 1973 book, "Tools for Conviviality," and revisited in his later work, which describes how a technology or service becomes so exceptionally dominant that even with multiple providers, its users are excluded from society without access to the product. His initial example is the effect of cars on societies, where the car itself shaped cities by its needs, so much so that people without cars become excluded from participation in cities. A radical monopoly is when the dominance of one type of product supersedes dominance by any one brand. Social media as a technology in the forms of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter could be seen as a radical monopoly for reputation, as is Linkedin for employment, colleges for education, etc. I think Illich's criticisms of car culture pushed him outside the Overton window of policy making, but his radical monopoly concept is a useful critical tool for reasoning about tech and ethics. A counter argument could use the example that the discovery of fire created a radical monopoly on heat, and therefore it's so general as to be applied arbitrarily to anything you don't like. However, being able to think about the consequences of a new radical monopoly might have on some aspect of human experience is useful for anticipating policy options in response to dynamic technology development.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Counter-counter argument. Fire can be produced by nearly anyone with a bare minimum level of competence and coordination required (flint and steel, two sticks and a string, various other methods). A car or college education cannot be provided by a person to themselves. They are reliant both on the thing to participate in society, and on society in order to obtain the thing.
  - thelightthat 6y ago
    Could you link to anti car HN discussions or articles? Thank you
- pantaloony 6y ago
  His essay on (in part) cars drove (haha) me to run the numbers and despite being fairly conservative with how much closer-together my city would be without car infrastructure (esp. parking lots and massive, useless “green space” setbacks and margins to keep roads at a tolerable distance from people) and despite my being somewhat thrifty on car spending and having a relatively short commute—sure enough, I was right around break-even for time savings vs. a bike in a hypothetical very-few-cars version of my city.
slowmovintarget 6y ago
Written in 1970, still relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
tmaly 6y ago
"Classroom attendance removes children from the everyday world of Western culture and plunges them into an environment far more primitive, magical, and deadly serious." I know it was written in 1970, but back then a family could still have one person working a good job on just a high school diploma. Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work.
- watwut 6y ago
  As someone who absolutely want work and thus needs the kids somewhere during the day, the whole "school is just daycare" is crap. My kids were at home and I worked during covid and the hell they learn more now that they are back in school. And while I still am working from home and they were actually quite cool during day, the learning effects of school are massive and massively appreciated - by both kids and me. It would be easier and cheaper to have them in non school daycare. We don't do that, because primary reason for schools is not actually daycares.
  - tharne 6y ago
    You must have much better schools where you live compared to me.
    - Loughla 6y ago
      Yes, the quality of education varies substantially from district to district, or even building to building, and is highly reliant on geography and local income in the United States.
  - guidoism 6y ago
    It’s true only because you and your kids weren’t prepared and didn’t have time to think through the situation. Trying to replicate school at home is a recipe for disaster. Instead, think about what an education means to you and what you want your kids to be when they are 18 or so. Then design your years and days around that. Nobody can fault you for the result of the pandemic homeschooling experiment. Nobody was prepared. And you were trying to work from home at the same time. This last semester has pretty much just been a pause for most people.
snikeris 6y ago
> In these essays, I will show that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery. > Ivan Dominic Illich (/ɪˈvɑːn ˈɪlɪtʃ/; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. I wonder if his experience as a priest informed his commentary here. Religions start from exceptional individuals who divine spiritual truth. They develop followers who recognize said truth. Over time, followers ossify into a church, which can be thought of as an institutionalization of spiritual values.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  His ministry work in Puerto Rico was particularly influential on his thinking about schooling and institutions more broadly. The famous "students instinctively know..." quote that's currently top-voted on this article is referring to the Puerto Rican youth he worked with as part of his work at Centro Intercultural de Documentación. I can't remember where I learned this; it might have been in one of his other books (perhaps Tools for Conviviality?) or in one of the audio recordings of him lecturing. It's kind of hard to read the last chapter of Deschooling without noticing he's an Italian priest...
xhkkffbf 6y ago
I've heard this called "Defund the thought police."
- tharne 6y ago
  Let me know if you start making T-Shirts or bumper stickers.
- core-questions 6y ago
  We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.
jonjacky 6y ago
Steven Kell has noted the relevance of Illich's ideas to computing and software: https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19de-escalating-intro-script.txt https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/... "Ivan Illich was a 20th-century philosopher whose work recurringly examines the counterproductivity of modern social institutions. ... I encountered Illich's writing entirely by chance, but was immediately struck by how directly his words transferred to described what I saw as the plight of software." https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19software-slides.pdf https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/... "Software Against Humanity? An Illichian perspective on the industrial era of software ... (Ivan Illich) observed that (institutions he criticised were) poor at (their) stated ends... the means and ends had become confused! (those institutions) can still be self-sustaining, can still claim advances by (their) own criteria ..."
korse 6y ago
"Indeed, preventive concentration camps for predelinquents would be a logical improvement over the school system." Nice.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleuze 6y ago
Read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Foucault's distinctly french and distinctly intellectual. The two are definitely touching the same elephant, and if you like Foucault you'll probably find something in Illich, but Illich appeals to a less intellectual and more American (religious?) audience that would turned off by -- or simply never get past the first page of -- Foucault. Religious fundamentalist homeschoolers will read Illich and get something out of it, but would probably not have the patience/reading comprehension level to engage with Foucault. Or, if they did, would burn it. So, both have their place. That said, I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though. I think his reaction to schooling was something like "yeah that's so transparently a factory floor look-alike and so transparently training compliant factory workers that I'm not even sure it's worth saying much else".
  - deleuze 6y ago
    Totally, and French intellectuals don't usually go over well with the average reader of HN. But, if anyone finds the discussion in this comment section resonates strongly with them, just reading about Foucault's ideas would be a good place to start. Why limit ourselves to school. :) This is fertile ground for thought and I'm glad to see discussion here. > I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though Agreed. I think most schools were just broadly more authoritarian when he was writing. There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      > There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies Exactly. You could literally write Discipline and Punish today, but with education. The body -> mind and everything. Educate and Punish? ;)
SrslyJosh 6y ago
> "Today in the United States the black and even the migrant can aspire to a level of professional treatment which would have been unthinkable two generations ago, and which seems grotesque to most people in the Third World" "The black"? "The migrant"? Really? Instead of this "helping the poor hurts them" bullshit, learn about how white people in the United States stole from blacks, again and again, to keep them from building generational wealth and stability: https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1282118657150263301 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/128211865715026330... I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are problems with modern schooling (quantity != quality), but this guy just wants to pretend white people and the wealthy/middle class have no obligation to build a healthy society that functions well for everyone.
- ameixaseca 6y ago
  It doesn't look like he is criticizing welfare per se, but the fact that the welfare system is built in a way to punish the poor even more. Or even the health system, which treats the poor but puts them in huge debt. The critique seems to be on the institutions that only serve the present structures of power. To be honest, it's hard to disagree with him on this, even being in favour of welfare and/or socialized healthcare systems.
dang 6y ago
A thread from 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107 One interesting comment from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620 Illich related from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587
supernova87a 6y ago
My god, when I read stuff like this (and some comments here), I think -- only someone who grew up in a society which benefitted from all the supposed ills of education and useful institutions could even have the luxury to write or seriously believe something like this. This is like saying that because of a small percentage of (yes, I agree) non-ideal outcomes, one should dismantle the entire system that has gotten us to the state we are in today -- which is, to remind many people, a stable, more materially prosperous, more-free-of-conflict time than any in our past. I hesitate to point out some parallels to our current social movements, for fear of being branded a counter-revolutionary. More people are educated and out of poverty right now than any time previously in history. You would seek to destroy the system that has gotten you here, because some of its imperfections are showing by the very nature of the progress it has produced? Many people around the world would love to have the curse of educational systems that grind down your spirit by providing you textbooks, materials, teachers, computers, and corporate faceless healthcare systems that cruelly save you from life-threatening diseases. How quickly we let the great become normal and disappointing. We should fix things that are going wrong, and that expose and remedy the flaws in how the system was designed. It's true that in any system, unintended side effects and people seeking to gain from it start to emerge. And that should be fixed. But, often the people who lack proper perspective on all that a system has produced (at hard toil and accomplishment of their predecessors) -- usually those who are young and those who have nothing to lose -- are too willing to destroy something that has given them the luxury of thinking it should be destroyed.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  A lot of it is that we focus on a single outcome from the education system and that is the workforce outcome. The problem is that the workforce outcome is based on competition as only so many are needed, so the best are chosen and the rest... We only need so many doctors and you can have all the schools you want for it and pre-med, but the number of people getting sick is not increasing. Education does not increase demand for highly paid occupations. We blame the education system for those who don't get into med school ending up in debt when that is just a mathematical reality. We aren't considering all the other benefits of just having a well educated populace.
- 6y ago
kweinber 6y ago
This is an instance of having very compelling writing that describes a problem eloquently.... and then proposes solutions that are disastrous and make things even worse. Educating humanity is difficult. Every solution has its flaws. Giving up on it is worse than every flawed solution, however.
- core-questions 6y ago
  It is a hallmark of left-wing political thought to have excellent, valid critiques of real problems, and then on top of such an excellent foundation, provide solutions that involve only deconstruction, tearing-down, revolution, and other such feel-good, troop-rallying calls to action - and no actual plan for what to do once we get to the far side. The identified problems remain, as do all of the original problems that the outgoing system has solved. The aeons of tradition that have built up to the current solution will have to simply be rediscovered the hard way, perhaps with different window-dressing, but ultimately not that far off from their previous incarnation, especially if the deconstruction happens by those who haven't truly learned the lessons about what went well and what went badly before. Sometimes this comes about because the wishful solutions we want to apply don't work; sometimes because reality is messier than we want to admit, and the solutions are messier still. Child discipline, for example, may always end up being harsher than we as gentle, respectful people would like it to be, particularly for unruly children. Institutions may always be slower to react and improve than we would like. Much like in software, a full rewrite is often only a pathway to a new set of problems, compared to a refactoring that could solve the known set of problems that remain without losing any existing value.
- throwaw4y-plate 6y ago
  That's basically Marx in a nutshell. Great diagnosis, impractical cure.
  - marnett 6y ago
    Is there a particular “cure” that was recommended by Marx/Engels for addressing their observations on the relationship between capital and labor in mid-19th century industrialist England that you found specifically impractical for the time?
alexashka 6y ago
I wish people would think about the format they use to present their ideas more. If you're presenting arguments based on empirical evidence and logic, you are building a directed graph. Using long-winded prose to represent it is the wrong data structure, which makes working with it (comprehending and contemplating its merits) difficult.
- marnett 6y ago
  Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this? I find it interesting, but philosophers have typically used long form prose to build up their logical theories and arguments. Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up. I do not know have an intimate enough understanding of linguistics to understand if modern theories support this view.
  - alexashka 6y ago
    > Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this? Not that I'm aware of. This is one of few thoughts I consider novel and not yet implemented anywhere. > Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up Right. A picture is worth a thousand words. There is a hierarchy of beliefs everyone holds in their head to make sense of the world and yet nobody is drawing diagrams to represent them. If I ever make enough money for a 10 year sabbatical, I'll take a stab at this problem.
- voidhorse 6y ago
  That’s effectively what Wittgenstein was saying in the Tractatus, only to turn around and repudiate all of it in the Philosophical Investigations—at the end of the day, logical systems based on the manipulations of symbols are one thing while the messy reality of being human and living is quite another.
  - alexashka 6y ago
    > logical systems based on the manipulations of symbols are one thing while the messy reality of being human and living is quite another. There has to be a lot of overlap, or else we wouldn't bother with logic and coherence in our everyday lives :) If we want predictive powers that we can communicate and play with, logic systems seem to be the best practical tool we've come up with.
LatteLazy 6y ago
"Schools, banks, government, vaccines, democracy, the apollo program? all giant conspiracies" says angry man
Melting_Harps 6y ago
John Taylor Gatto's work in this space is also worth noting: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss I honestly could not be more happy that COVID is displacing Education once and for all and making it compete with the ED-Tech solutions, some from many from HN regulars. Because prior to that, it was always known how superior the product could be if adoption were possible, but now that its happening it really is hard to grasp how fast it started to disrupt the Industry and how quick students are to adapt to it. Granted, there are growing pains, but I just finished my exams and required readings for my Supply Chain course(s) for the rest of the month this weekend and most of today, something entirely impossible in the traditional model. I wish I had the patience to have stayed in the few Honor classes I was forced to sit in when I was in HS, if only because so many here have said that this model is actually more apt to what is being promoted, which favours autodidacts. Instead, I got impatient at the idea of mandatory attendance and class participation, because I was already attending University level STEM lectures by my Junior Year in HS of my own volition (MOOCS/ED-tech weren't a thing, nor was wide access to broadband or wifi for that matter back then) and felt it was a waste of my time entirely. Still, I'm glad there are more options for children to opt out and still have a solid trajectory for some profession instead of being seen as a delinquent, degenerate, or misfit as I was accused of despite still holding a 3.6 GPA and only showing up for the exams/quiz days. I tried my best to try and defund the school I felt was holding me in a mind prison, and that got me in a lot of trouble and almost delayed my graduation date because despite having had the grades the administration felt it was imperative I show up daily and on time, something I didn't agree with and would become entirely optional in University where I had become more focused as I divested out of the HS model and took my Education into my own hands at the age of 16. The sooner we can decouple from the formal Education paradigm, the better we will be as a Society and can explore for more efficient modes of professional Education and training, and this includes the University model which is starting to eat itself alive the further COVID delays classes on campus. Extinction Rebellion and it's large collective of School Striking Youth are an affirmation that this was bound to happen, but it should also not be forgotten that these kids are also not lost causes, but are instead highly motivated environmentalists just seeking alternative ways to finding solutions to the dire consequences they face and should be trained in professions and positions that suit their aims. I'd love to be able to teach some of them Ag/Plant Science for regenerative and sustainable farms, and have them in turn be able to get an opportunity to undergo the same apprenticeship model I followed and eventually manage a farm of their own to help offset the CO2 emission and undertake carbon sequestering/negative business models. I'd probably also sign them up for Grid Alternatives, which taught me how Solar Panel installation and grid hookups were being done in the US, whereas I only knew how to do it in the EU. Grid Alternatives [1] is also an amazing non-profit that helps low income families offset the expenses of Solar Panel installation and helps them integrate into their own community. If we had UBI I could probably also teach a few kids the basics on how to cook properly and help some of them be the dedicated culinary staff that helps feed the staff on site installing the panels. 1: https://gridalternatives.org/ https://gridalternatives.org/
kazinator 6y ago
If we take the long-term historic perspective, society has been mostly de-schooled throughout history. Going to school was a privilege for the children of the haves; the have-nots didn't go to school, and that was one factor which kept them that way, generation over generation. Deschooling will never happen across all social strata; the privileged will keep sending kids to school no matter what. Only a complete idiot would fall for this hippie bullshit and not send his kids to school. The anti-intellectual movements in America in the 1960's likely did in fact contribute to a kind of deschooling of the lower classes, resulting in ever larger economic inequalities fifty years later.

201 points by minerjoe 6y ago

I read Deschooling Society after taking a job at a school that is modeled after The Sudbury Valley School in MA. I agree with the critique about the design and function of school in our society, and think that democratic self directed education is a viable starting point for a future educative system. At the school I work at, we have created a democratic community that is focused on learning as opposed to teaching. Kids are able to learn whatever they would like without interference or coercion. The rules and limitations are decided by the community according to democratic principles. It is the best example of a functional educational environment whose goal is true education that I have encountered so far. I would also recommend people check out "Energy and Equity", I was impressed and influenced by the assertion that energy consumption is an important window to understanding class and society. The idea that we could have chosen to increase all human's speed to 20mph, but have instead allowed a small minority to travel at 70 mph, and an even smaller minority to travel at nearly 600 mph, has deeply influenced my view of structural inequality and violence.

minerjoe 6y ago

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question. In these essays, I will show that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery."

slowmovintarget 6y ago
Wow is that on the nose.
tharne 6y ago
The amount truth in that short passage is mind-blowing.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them You wish they knew but they don't. The kids, especially the poor ones, want worksheets, not problems. They want to pass but not learn. They want a degree without the competence. They want a job without possibility of advancement and if you don't provide that they resent you because you are in the way.
- dbspin 6y ago
  You're describing the Nth generation in a hopeless environment, not children in general. This is an encultured attitude, not an innate one. Illich's point, and one born out by learning research is that the desire to learn, to gain knowledge and mastery for its own sake - is innate to such an extent that it can actually be diminished by extrinsic rewards. All children share this.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Complete agreement about the hopeless environment. My point was that the enculturation works extremely reliably. I have not met a single student who questioned or rejected the culture. It is dejecting, and you despise the kids for that.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > I have not met a single student who questioned or rejected the culture. Both as a student myself and later as a long-term sub in a high school for a while in a poor district, I met lots of students who rejected whatever you might want to (rightly or wrongly) characterize as “the culture”, including many who adapted to what they saw as the incentives in the system while still rejecting the culture and attitudes they perceived as setting those incentives.

motohagiography 6y ago

Illich's concept of a "Radical Monopoly," is also immensely relevant to internet platforms. Radical monopoly is a concept defined by philosopher and author Ivan Illich in his 1973 book, "Tools for Conviviality," and revisited in his later work, which describes how a technology or service becomes so exceptionally dominant that even with multiple providers, its users are excluded from society without access to the product. His initial example is the effect of cars on societies, where the car itself shaped cities by its needs, so much so that people without cars become excluded from participation in cities. A radical monopoly is when the dominance of one type of product supersedes dominance by any one brand. Social media as a technology in the forms of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter could be seen as a radical monopoly for reputation, as is Linkedin for employment, colleges for education, etc. I think Illich's criticisms of car culture pushed him outside the Overton window of policy making, but his radical monopoly concept is a useful critical tool for reasoning about tech and ethics. A counter argument could use the example that the discovery of fire created a radical monopoly on heat, and therefore it's so general as to be applied arbitrarily to anything you don't like. However, being able to think about the consequences of a new radical monopoly might have on some aspect of human experience is useful for anticipating policy options in response to dynamic technology development.

Jtsummers 6y ago
Counter-counter argument. Fire can be produced by nearly anyone with a bare minimum level of competence and coordination required (flint and steel, two sticks and a string, various other methods). A car or college education cannot be provided by a person to themselves. They are reliant both on the thing to participate in society, and on society in order to obtain the thing.
- thelightthat 6y ago
  Could you link to anti car HN discussions or articles? Thank you
pantaloony 6y ago
His essay on (in part) cars drove (haha) me to run the numbers and despite being fairly conservative with how much closer-together my city would be without car infrastructure (esp. parking lots and massive, useless “green space” setbacks and margins to keep roads at a tolerable distance from people) and despite my being somewhat thrifty on car spending and having a relatively short commute—sure enough, I was right around break-even for time savings vs. a bike in a hypothetical very-few-cars version of my city.

slowmovintarget 6y ago

Written in 1970, still relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

tmaly 6y ago

"Classroom attendance removes children from the everyday world of Western culture and plunges them into an environment far more primitive, magical, and deadly serious." I know it was written in 1970, but back then a family could still have one person working a good job on just a high school diploma. Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work.

watwut 6y ago
As someone who absolutely want work and thus needs the kids somewhere during the day, the whole "school is just daycare" is crap. My kids were at home and I worked during covid and the hell they learn more now that they are back in school. And while I still am working from home and they were actually quite cool during day, the learning effects of school are massive and massively appreciated - by both kids and me. It would be easier and cheaper to have them in non school daycare. We don't do that, because primary reason for schools is not actually daycares.
- tharne 6y ago
  You must have much better schools where you live compared to me.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Yes, the quality of education varies substantially from district to district, or even building to building, and is highly reliant on geography and local income in the United States.
- guidoism 6y ago
  It’s true only because you and your kids weren’t prepared and didn’t have time to think through the situation. Trying to replicate school at home is a recipe for disaster. Instead, think about what an education means to you and what you want your kids to be when they are 18 or so. Then design your years and days around that. Nobody can fault you for the result of the pandemic homeschooling experiment. Nobody was prepared. And you were trying to work from home at the same time. This last semester has pretty much just been a pause for most people.

snikeris 6y ago

> In these essays, I will show that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery. > Ivan Dominic Illich (/ɪˈvɑːn ˈɪlɪtʃ/; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. I wonder if his experience as a priest informed his commentary here. Religions start from exceptional individuals who divine spiritual truth. They develop followers who recognize said truth. Over time, followers ossify into a church, which can be thought of as an institutionalization of spiritual values.

throwawaygh 6y ago
His ministry work in Puerto Rico was particularly influential on his thinking about schooling and institutions more broadly. The famous "students instinctively know..." quote that's currently top-voted on this article is referring to the Puerto Rican youth he worked with as part of his work at Centro Intercultural de Documentación. I can't remember where I learned this; it might have been in one of his other books (perhaps Tools for Conviviality?) or in one of the audio recordings of him lecturing. It's kind of hard to read the last chapter of Deschooling without noticing he's an Italian priest...

xhkkffbf 6y ago

I've heard this called "Defund the thought police."

tharne 6y ago
Let me know if you start making T-Shirts or bumper stickers.
core-questions 6y ago
We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.

jonjacky 6y ago

Steven Kell has noted the relevance of Illich's ideas to computing and software: https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19de-escalating-intro-script.txt https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/... "Ivan Illich was a 20th-century philosopher whose work recurringly examines the counterproductivity of modern social institutions. ... I encountered Illich's writing entirely by chance, but was immediately struck by how directly his words transferred to described what I saw as the plight of software." https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19software-slides.pdf https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/... "Software Against Humanity? An Illichian perspective on the industrial era of software ... (Ivan Illich) observed that (institutions he criticised were) poor at (their) stated ends... the means and ends had become confused! (those institutions) can still be self-sustaining, can still claim advances by (their) own criteria ..."

korse 6y ago

"Indeed, preventive concentration camps for predelinquents would be a logical improvement over the school system." Nice.

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deleuze 6y ago

Read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.

throwawaygh 6y ago
Foucault's distinctly french and distinctly intellectual. The two are definitely touching the same elephant, and if you like Foucault you'll probably find something in Illich, but Illich appeals to a less intellectual and more American (religious?) audience that would turned off by -- or simply never get past the first page of -- Foucault. Religious fundamentalist homeschoolers will read Illich and get something out of it, but would probably not have the patience/reading comprehension level to engage with Foucault. Or, if they did, would burn it. So, both have their place. That said, I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though. I think his reaction to schooling was something like "yeah that's so transparently a factory floor look-alike and so transparently training compliant factory workers that I'm not even sure it's worth saying much else".
- deleuze 6y ago
  Totally, and French intellectuals don't usually go over well with the average reader of HN. But, if anyone finds the discussion in this comment section resonates strongly with them, just reading about Foucault's ideas would be a good place to start. Why limit ourselves to school. :) This is fertile ground for thought and I'm glad to see discussion here. > I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though Agreed. I think most schools were just broadly more authoritarian when he was writing. There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > There's certainly more room to discuss the ways in which schooling has changed as we've shifted from the factory to service and knowledge economies Exactly. You could literally write Discipline and Punish today, but with education. The body -> mind and everything. Educate and Punish? ;)

SrslyJosh 6y ago

> "Today in the United States the black and even the migrant can aspire to a level of professional treatment which would have been unthinkable two generations ago, and which seems grotesque to most people in the Third World" "The black"? "The migrant"? Really? Instead of this "helping the poor hurts them" bullshit, learn about how white people in the United States stole from blacks, again and again, to keep them from building generational wealth and stability: https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1282118657150263301 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/128211865715026330... I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are problems with modern schooling (quantity != quality), but this guy just wants to pretend white people and the wealthy/middle class have no obligation to build a healthy society that functions well for everyone.

ameixaseca 6y ago
It doesn't look like he is criticizing welfare per se, but the fact that the welfare system is built in a way to punish the poor even more. Or even the health system, which treats the poor but puts them in huge debt. The critique seems to be on the institutions that only serve the present structures of power. To be honest, it's hard to disagree with him on this, even being in favour of welfare and/or socialized healthcare systems.

dang 6y ago

A thread from 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107 One interesting comment from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620 Illich related from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587

supernova87a 6y ago

My god, when I read stuff like this (and some comments here), I think -- only someone who grew up in a society which benefitted from all the supposed ills of education and useful institutions could even have the luxury to write or seriously believe something like this. This is like saying that because of a small percentage of (yes, I agree) non-ideal outcomes, one should dismantle the entire system that has gotten us to the state we are in today -- which is, to remind many people, a stable, more materially prosperous, more-free-of-conflict time than any in our past. I hesitate to point out some parallels to our current social movements, for fear of being branded a counter-revolutionary. More people are educated and out of poverty right now than any time previously in history. You would seek to destroy the system that has gotten you here, because some of its imperfections are showing by the very nature of the progress it has produced? Many people around the world would love to have the curse of educational systems that grind down your spirit by providing you textbooks, materials, teachers, computers, and corporate faceless healthcare systems that cruelly save you from life-threatening diseases. How quickly we let the great become normal and disappointing. We should fix things that are going wrong, and that expose and remedy the flaws in how the system was designed. It's true that in any system, unintended side effects and people seeking to gain from it start to emerge. And that should be fixed. But, often the people who lack proper perspective on all that a system has produced (at hard toil and accomplishment of their predecessors) -- usually those who are young and those who have nothing to lose -- are too willing to destroy something that has given them the luxury of thinking it should be destroyed.

MattGaiser 6y ago
A lot of it is that we focus on a single outcome from the education system and that is the workforce outcome. The problem is that the workforce outcome is based on competition as only so many are needed, so the best are chosen and the rest... We only need so many doctors and you can have all the schools you want for it and pre-med, but the number of people getting sick is not increasing. Education does not increase demand for highly paid occupations. We blame the education system for those who don't get into med school ending up in debt when that is just a mathematical reality. We aren't considering all the other benefits of just having a well educated populace.
6y ago

kweinber 6y ago

This is an instance of having very compelling writing that describes a problem eloquently.... and then proposes solutions that are disastrous and make things even worse. Educating humanity is difficult. Every solution has its flaws. Giving up on it is worse than every flawed solution, however.

core-questions 6y ago
It is a hallmark of left-wing political thought to have excellent, valid critiques of real problems, and then on top of such an excellent foundation, provide solutions that involve only deconstruction, tearing-down, revolution, and other such feel-good, troop-rallying calls to action - and no actual plan for what to do once we get to the far side. The identified problems remain, as do all of the original problems that the outgoing system has solved. The aeons of tradition that have built up to the current solution will have to simply be rediscovered the hard way, perhaps with different window-dressing, but ultimately not that far off from their previous incarnation, especially if the deconstruction happens by those who haven't truly learned the lessons about what went well and what went badly before. Sometimes this comes about because the wishful solutions we want to apply don't work; sometimes because reality is messier than we want to admit, and the solutions are messier still. Child discipline, for example, may always end up being harsher than we as gentle, respectful people would like it to be, particularly for unruly children. Institutions may always be slower to react and improve than we would like. Much like in software, a full rewrite is often only a pathway to a new set of problems, compared to a refactoring that could solve the known set of problems that remain without losing any existing value.
throwaw4y-plate 6y ago
That's basically Marx in a nutshell. Great diagnosis, impractical cure.
- marnett 6y ago
  Is there a particular “cure” that was recommended by Marx/Engels for addressing their observations on the relationship between capital and labor in mid-19th century industrialist England that you found specifically impractical for the time?

alexashka 6y ago

I wish people would think about the format they use to present their ideas more. If you're presenting arguments based on empirical evidence and logic, you are building a directed graph. Using long-winded prose to represent it is the wrong data structure, which makes working with it (comprehending and contemplating its merits) difficult.

marnett 6y ago
Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this? I find it interesting, but philosophers have typically used long form prose to build up their logical theories and arguments. Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up. I do not know have an intimate enough understanding of linguistics to understand if modern theories support this view.
- alexashka 6y ago
  > Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this? Not that I'm aware of. This is one of few thoughts I consider novel and not yet implemented anywhere. > Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up Right. A picture is worth a thousand words. There is a hierarchy of beliefs everyone holds in their head to make sense of the world and yet nobody is drawing diagrams to represent them. If I ever make enough money for a 10 year sabbatical, I'll take a stab at this problem.
voidhorse 6y ago
That’s effectively what Wittgenstein was saying in the Tractatus, only to turn around and repudiate all of it in the Philosophical Investigations—at the end of the day, logical systems based on the manipulations of symbols are one thing while the messy reality of being human and living is quite another.
- alexashka 6y ago
  > logical systems based on the manipulations of symbols are one thing while the messy reality of being human and living is quite another. There has to be a lot of overlap, or else we wouldn't bother with logic and coherence in our everyday lives :) If we want predictive powers that we can communicate and play with, logic systems seem to be the best practical tool we've come up with.

LatteLazy 6y ago

"Schools, banks, government, vaccines, democracy, the apollo program? all giant conspiracies" says angry man

Melting_Harps 6y ago

John Taylor Gatto's work in this space is also worth noting: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss I honestly could not be more happy that COVID is displacing Education once and for all and making it compete with the ED-Tech solutions, some from many from HN regulars. Because prior to that, it was always known how superior the product could be if adoption were possible, but now that its happening it really is hard to grasp how fast it started to disrupt the Industry and how quick students are to adapt to it. Granted, there are growing pains, but I just finished my exams and required readings for my Supply Chain course(s) for the rest of the month this weekend and most of today, something entirely impossible in the traditional model. I wish I had the patience to have stayed in the few Honor classes I was forced to sit in when I was in HS, if only because so many here have said that this model is actually more apt to what is being promoted, which favours autodidacts. Instead, I got impatient at the idea of mandatory attendance and class participation, because I was already attending University level STEM lectures by my Junior Year in HS of my own volition (MOOCS/ED-tech weren't a thing, nor was wide access to broadband or wifi for that matter back then) and felt it was a waste of my time entirely. Still, I'm glad there are more options for children to opt out and still have a solid trajectory for some profession instead of being seen as a delinquent, degenerate, or misfit as I was accused of despite still holding a 3.6 GPA and only showing up for the exams/quiz days. I tried my best to try and defund the school I felt was holding me in a mind prison, and that got me in a lot of trouble and almost delayed my graduation date because despite having had the grades the administration felt it was imperative I show up daily and on time, something I didn't agree with and would become entirely optional in University where I had become more focused as I divested out of the HS model and took my Education into my own hands at the age of 16. The sooner we can decouple from the formal Education paradigm, the better we will be as a Society and can explore for more efficient modes of professional Education and training, and this includes the University model which is starting to eat itself alive the further COVID delays classes on campus. Extinction Rebellion and it's large collective of School Striking Youth are an affirmation that this was bound to happen, but it should also not be forgotten that these kids are also not lost causes, but are instead highly motivated environmentalists just seeking alternative ways to finding solutions to the dire consequences they face and should be trained in professions and positions that suit their aims. I'd love to be able to teach some of them Ag/Plant Science for regenerative and sustainable farms, and have them in turn be able to get an opportunity to undergo the same apprenticeship model I followed and eventually manage a farm of their own to help offset the CO2 emission and undertake carbon sequestering/negative business models. I'd probably also sign them up for Grid Alternatives, which taught me how Solar Panel installation and grid hookups were being done in the US, whereas I only knew how to do it in the EU. Grid Alternatives [1] is also an amazing non-profit that helps low income families offset the expenses of Solar Panel installation and helps them integrate into their own community. If we had UBI I could probably also teach a few kids the basics on how to cook properly and help some of them be the dedicated culinary staff that helps feed the staff on site installing the panels. 1: https://gridalternatives.org/ https://gridalternatives.org/

kazinator 6y ago

If we take the long-term historic perspective, society has been mostly de-schooled throughout history. Going to school was a privilege for the children of the haves; the have-nots didn't go to school, and that was one factor which kept them that way, generation over generation. Deschooling will never happen across all social strata; the privileged will keep sending kids to school no matter what. Only a complete idiot would fall for this hippie bullshit and not send his kids to school. The anti-intellectual movements in America in the 1960's likely did in fact contribute to a kind of deschooling of the lower classes, resulting in ever larger economic inequalities fifty years later.