Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich was born in Vienna (1926-2002), educated in religious schools, exiled because of Jewish ancestry and moved to Florence.  Studied Philosophy and Theology at the Gregorian University (Rome), became a priest in New York, then Vice Rector of the Pontifical University (Puerto Rico).  Taught at Fordham University (NY).  

In 1961 he created the Intercultural Documentation Centre (CIDOC) at Cuernavaca, Mexico where he put his educational theories into practice. 

In 1971 his “Deschooling Society” was published, in which he explains how school has confiscated education, in the same way that the hospital has appropriated health. The institution has monopolised knowledge and ruins the states that have to fund the teaching. 

“Throughout the world, school harms education because it sees itself as solely responsible”. 

In particular, students from modest families know intuitively the benefits that school can bring them.  It teaches them to confuse the ways of acquiring knowledge with the taught subject and once the distinction is erased, they see the logic of school.  The longer that they remain in its grasp, the better the results will be and, as well, that the process of climbing leads to success. That is what the child learns at school. 

It is thus that they learn to confuse teaching and learning, that education consists of stepping from class to class, that diploma is a synonym of competence, that knowing how to use language allows them to say something new. ….  Their imagination, now subdued by the rule of school, allows them to be convinced to substitute the idea of service for that of worth. 

They, in effect, imagine that the only care necessary for health is medical treatment. The improvement of communal life is dealt with by social services. They confuse individual security with police protection, the army with national security,  the daily struggle to survive with productive work. Health, education, human dignity, independence and creative effort, thus all depend upon the good functioning of the institutions that purport to serve these ends. All improvement, it seems, depends  on the funding of hospitals, schools and all the bodies involved….

The poor are always duped into believing that their children will benefit from a proper schooling.  That may be but a promise, as in Latin America or reality in the US.  The results in both cases are comparable; after enduring twelve years of schooling, the deprived children with disabled parents from the North wither as much as those of the South.  In neither area do schools ensure equality; on the contrary, their existence is enough to discourage the poor, making them incapable of grasping a proper education. 

Throughout the World, school harms education because it sees itself as the only body that can do it. They come to believe that its many failures make education a costly business, it is incomprehensibly complex with a mystical alchemy – Why not look for the philosopher’s stone. 

School takes up money, the people and good will available in the education domain and protective of its monopoly leads it to prevent other institutions from assuming educational roles.  Besides, it plays an important role in the customs and knowledge that the different social activities imply; those may be work, leisure, politics, life in the framework of a city or in the family. It does not allow these other activities to become favoured educational media, when cost of educational establishments becomes prohibitively expensive. 

Educational establishments lead us into paradoxical situation;  they continually need more money and that budgetary increase only reinforces their destructive power in countries that allow this increase and, by contagion, internationally. 

At a time when it is clear that our physical environment is menaced by pollution and will become uninhabitable if we don’t change our ways; it is also time to perceive that there are other types of pollution. Society and individuals’ lives are poisoned by considering social security, education and health to be competitive and obligatory consumables. 

This escalation in the educational sphere is as dangerous as an escalation in armaments, without us being as aware. This is a general phenomenon, everywhere education budgets inflate immeasurably faster than the number of pupils or the gross national product. Everywhere the amounts allocated are insufficient and do not meet the parents’ expectations, nor those of the teachers and pupils. Then, taking into account the number of children not in school, it is impossible to find the capital and good will to bring about change. 

Analysis – Edgar Morin

Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist, who worked for UESCO.  He is best known for his work on “Transdisciplinarity”.  His work is very influential in francophone countries and in Latin America. 

Morin suggests that the network of knowledge advocated by Ivan Illich may serve as a base for considering the reform of our schools. 

Illich appeared in the late 1960s, at the same time environmental concerns were being raised. His writings have never penetrated the spirits.  “Deschooling Society” has certainly been read, but its polemic was immediately rejected, doubtless because he attacked the basis of our culture. 

Young Native Americans from northern Canada understand human and natural phenomena as part of a mutual relationship. When they approach a lake or forest, the presence of some trampled grass, some animal dung or a sound implies the presence of a small animal.

When they arrive in school, they are confused by the institutional disciplines that form and adapt the spirit to the dominant rationale.  

Illich clearly shows how knowledge, like medicine, has become dangerously specialised, divided and partial.  His idea is to set up “networks of knowledge”, to create a co-ordination centre to supply teachers to meet each pupil’s needs.  For example, if a child wants to learn Chinese, a teacher of Chinese would be allocated to him.  The school would thus be freed from the disciplinary straightjacket. 

Without necessarily going as far as that, it could inspire us think about educational reform.  This breaking up of knowledge, that Illich deplored, today makes one evade the examination of civilisation by transforming it into a collection of individual problems.  There is even more need now to reflect globally on ourselves, since each problem, by being dealt with by a specialist, becomes independent of the others. 

Teaching should re-centre itself around things that allow us to deal with those problems that are essential to us as people, as citizens and human beings.  For example, one could put the accent on understanding others and showing children that, instead of searching who had started a dispute, who is right and who is wrong, they should look at the vicious circle caused by not understanding the other’s point of view. The children should reflect on themselves very early, to realise that we all can be mistaken and be victims of illusions. 

Instead of dealing with truths, school should show them why they are mistaken, that would be very pertinent. 

Instead of knowledge that is split into disciplinary compartments that have to be studied during the foundation courses, I favour of teaching transdisciplinary knowledge, with a pedagogy of complexity would replace bite-sized learning. 

A Socratic discourse would favour the discovery in oneself truths that one ignores. School no longer has a monopoly on the knowledge that it transmits, so its role should be to help students discover an understanding that inspires them by appealing to their natural curiosities. The basic concern isn’t to teach all knowledge, but to show them that everybody is involved in the same project of vital and basic understanding. 

The various subjects are, by definition, separate; however Nature and human nature are not organised in this manner.  Closed specialisation inhibits culture, but open specialisation feeds off the context and the context feeds off it.  Renewed in this way, the disciplines will satisfy the needs of society.  Above all it is necessary to get away from the authoritarian and fragmented manner of teaching lacking interaction which Ivan Illich denounced. 

Unlike Illich, I believe that schools should remain as places for encounter and friendship, but his ideas can help us in the fight against knowledge that is fixed and bureaucratised by freeing aspirations of discovery.