
Deschooling Society - whalliburton
http://ournature.org/~novembre/illich/1970_deschooling.html
======
whalliburton
"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."

~~~
Alex3917
This reminds me of Alfie Kohn's essay What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?

~~~
whalliburton
<http://www.westburyfriends.org/connections/welleducated.htm>

------
martian
During my last year of high school, I remember asking the college guidance
counselors if there were other alternatives to going to college.

They told me my only other choice was to join the military.

Clearly something needs to change.

------
jyothi
Very nice article.

All the schools (at least what I have seen) today create literates and many
are not even good at that.

Education is meant to give a pupil the strength, confidence and a value system
to lead life. "A potter's son learnt pottery. That was true education."

Today, we want equal opportunity and choices, let us create an open education
system where pupils can/be guided to choose anything they want to learn which
would enable them to live better.

PS: Especially the Indian Education as Ramanujan rightly points out in his
Biography "The indian education system was devised to create slaves". All over
the world Indians, at least at high school level, are known to be smart at
Math, it is a myth. They are better clerks. That is what it was meant to
create then when the British Raj ruled here in India.

~~~
albertcardona
A book by John Taylor Gatto explains the origin of [modern] school. Briefly:
during the industrial revolution in the 1800s, industrial owners realized
children were "wasting" their time playing around. If instead they could be
pre-trained to be better workers ... so they designed modern school and
institutionalized it.

~~~
davidw
This seems to be one of those theories that sounds nice, but is in reality
just someone's politics creeping into their view of history:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#History>

I personally loathed school, was homeschooled for a year by my mother who was
desperate to get me out of a shitty system, and am certainly no fan of said
system, but this article and the debate here remind me why I'm not so
enthusiastic about non-startup/hacker material: you guys' comments are, so
far, on the whole, not terribly insightful on the subject.

I mean, it is a bad system in many ways, but so are other things like
democracies and free markets. That doesn't mean they aren't the best that we
currently have. Just look at places where people don't have the guarantee of
an education, if you want an example of what things could be like. Tons of
kids in Africa would love to have the "crappy" education that is on offer in
the US or Europe, because it would be the beginnings of a way out of the
poverty in which they live.

Can it be improved? Certainly, but "just git the dadburn gummint outta the
way" is, to put it mildly, a bit simplistic for something that even folks like
Friedman more or less concede is a merit good (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_good> ).

It's easy to point out the (many) flaws in the current system, which probably
wasn't that pleasant for many of us here. More difficult is coming up with
something that could take its place, provide an educated populace, and best
allocate people to the educational paths that would serve them best, and of
course does all this in a way that is reasonably cost effective, all with a
"clientèle" that may very well be quite immature in terms of making important
decisions. This is no easy task.

~~~
bokonist
_More difficult is coming up with something that could take its place, provide
an educated populace, and best allocate people to the educational paths that
would serve them best_

Well, for starters, we could return exactly to the system of, say, 1890. Most
people had enough formal schooling to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.
After that, you could learn on the job or through apprenticeship. Professions
such as architects or engineers required 0 - 4 years of post-secondary
education. High school drop outs designed great structures such as the New
York Public Library, the tunnels under London, or the California aqueducts.
Now legal credentialing laws mandate architects have 5-8 years of university.
Yet the architecture of the late 1800's is far, far, far superior to the
architecture of today. Perhaps if we abolished the architecture schools
altogether, and the professors had to find new careers in, say, stone masonry,
people would build beautiful buildings again...

The trouble with the idea that "the truth is somewhere in the middle" is that
the middle changes through time and place. For example, the average voter in
1900 was a hard-core libertarian compared to the average voter today. If you
lived in 1900 would you be libertarian? What ideology would you have if you
lived in 1965 China? Was the truth somewhere in between Deng and Mao? You
accuse the people who say "government should get out of the way" as being
simplistic. But to me, the people who automatically believe the truth is
always in the middle are even more simplistic.

The only way to find the answers is find it for yourself. I was once far more
liberal/progressive. But after numerous life experiences, plus concentrated
reading on almost every political subject, I have come to believe that the far
right libertarians ( ie, more libertarian than even Milton Friedman) are the
closest to being correct.

Imagine you were in a conversation with a 1900 libertarian. What evidence from
the world of 2008 would you show him that would prove his libertarianism
wrong? Would you show him our bombed out inner cities as evidence of the
glories of the welfare state? ( compare a 1900 account of the slums,
[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=8kEAAAAAYAAJ&...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=8kEAAAAAYAAJ&dq=the+slums+of+baltimore+chicago+new+york&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=_ZCcPFQvPC&sig=9_23__B3M4QUdLRjtPGhdxpQvIo&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result)
to a modern account like "The Corner" or "Gang Leader for a day" ) Would you
show him the public schools? The fine learning going on at our state colleges?
Would you show him the wonderful Brutalist buildings that our fully
credentialed architects produce? Do you think you could convince him that
creating a Federal Reserve made the financial system more stable?

As for the original question about the origins of American public schooling -
I don't think Gatto is completely right, but he's much closer to the truth
than 99% of Americans would realize. A few years ago I took a course on the
history of American education. I was shocked to find the progressives who
created American schooling did not care at all about students learning or even
job training. The original reasons were about Americanizing and assimilation
of immigrants in American values. Later on, the emphasis shifted more towards
socialization. Actual learning did not become the primary goal until the much
later on. The irony is that public schools were originally created by the
upper class progressives to control the lower classes. But by 1980, the
elimination of tracking and the restrictions of disciplinary actions made
public schools uninhabitable by upper class children, thus forcing them into
home schooling or expensive private schools.

~~~
davidw
I didn't say the truth was somewhere in the middle. I simply said that I do
not think that "the free market will fix everything" is an acceptable response
in this case.

> 1890

If I were black, or Italian, or Chinese, or something else that wasn't very
well thought of in 1890, I think I would have a vast preference for the public
schools of 2008. I happen to be white, but I believe that one function of
public schools is to give everyone something of a shot at a better life than
the one they happened to be born into.

Note again that I'm not saying things are perfect the way they are, or that
there aren't many good reforms that could be done to improve them (I think
we'd probably agree that giving teachers' unions less of a role would be
sensible). What I was stating is that compulsory education, despite some very
obvious defects, has served us pretty well, and that "throw it out!" without
suggesting something better is an uninteresting discussion, albeit far less
intellectually demanding. I don't really think I'm up to the challenge either:
I'd rather just concentrate on hacking and startup.

~~~
bokonist
Correlation is not causation. We're a lot richer now than in 1890, but is has
nothing to do with public schools.

1) We are rich today because we have lots of high-tech machinery. From Otto
and Daimler to Ford and the Wright brothers to Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak,
much of this technology was created by self-taught hackers. Some
industrial/engineering education was helpful at points, but it played a much
more minor role, and it comprises a tiny fraction of K-16 education today.

2) The modern American schooling system is so degenerate it is actively
destructive of the engineering/hacking ethic.

3) 90% of jobs in the economy require nothing more than reading, writing, and
arithmetic plus on the job training. Before the establishment of public
schools, New England states had 99% literacy rates. Thus historical evidence
shows that public schooling was never necessary. Poor people did not reach the
middle class through public schools, they did it by finding jobs, teaching
themselves skills, and working their way into the middle class. Most though,
achieved middle class status because the tools invented by hackers made them
far more productive. An assembly worker in 1925 was richer than a worker in
1900 thanks to Henry Ford, not because public schools taught him to build a
car more quickly.

4) Despite the fact that public schooling has little or know connection to
creating high tech machinery or to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic,
we dedicate an insane amount of time and money to it. As the article noted,
40% of Americans are either full-time students or full time educators.

5) Education spending outpaces inflation year after year, while the quality
gets worse and worse. See this graph for instance (
<http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/img082.gif> )

Given these facts, I don't think arguing for complete abolition is
unreasonable at all. When you have a cancer, you do not sit around thinking
about how you might be able to mutate that cancer into something beneficial.
You remove the cancer.

------
Alex3917
This is an interesting book. The thesis is basically that the way most of our
public institutions are set up the government supplies the razor and the
citizen buys the blades. This is bad because A) everyone pays for the razor
but only the rich get the benefits because only they can afford the blades B)
it forces everyone into the same "school" of education, healthcare, etc.
"Deschooling society" is sort of a pun that refers to both public schools but
also schools of thought.

Anyway the last time I submitted something from this book it was deleted. Not
marked dead, actually deleted. But check out the section on learning webs,
it's a cool vision of computer-mediated social networking from 1971.

~~~
whalliburton
Yes! Learning webs. Webs of all types.

I envision "the next big thing" as connecting needs with wants outside of the
current economic and social structures, down to the smallest scale.

Teacher learns as much as the student.

Sue likes teaching cooking. Sally wants to learn and will bring food.

Grandma Bessy needs someone to help move a few things around the apartment and
can pay $1. Joe is downstairs chilling on a stoop, could use a buck and likes
helping people.

Will likes teaching programming and gets the bug for a little community
hacking session. Scott and Joe and Sue and Larisa are dying to have a little
mentoring and work on real cool problems, even if for a night.

Corner farmers market is nearing close and half the produce is about to be
discarded. Community center has a nice kitchen and who wants fresh vegetable
soup?

Connections and options that would never have occurred otherwise.

Throw in a recommendation engine and reviews of the participants.

Outsourcing on the micro scale.

Temporary autonomous zones.

~~~
omouse
What's sad about what you're suggesting is that it's exactly how a proper
community is supposed to function! You don't even need the Internet to whelp
with this, a community center bulletin board will do as long as someone's
around to do the leg work and make it the place to check first.

 _sigh_. There is a problem with our society when we have to re-discover what
it means to be in a community.

~~~
whalliburton
Yes, but you work with what you have, and we have many a broken segmented
community. This is just making the bulletin board virtual and helping out with
the legwork.

------
mattchew
The Onion article about the 6-year-old (currently sharing the front page) says
it a little more succinctly. :)

I agree that we are an overschooled society. Unfortunately, the word
"education" has magical properties in right-thinking conversation. You can't
say you're against "education", you might as well say you want to grind up the
poor and use them for food.

We're making progress at the edges, though. More homeschooling, more ways to
educate yourself over the internet. Still plenty of room for new ideas from
clever hackers, too. :)

~~~
flipbrad
a major factor in overschooled society, and its' warped perception of
education, is an overreliance on diplomas. Would HN and the startup scene be
remotely as fertile, exciting, open and (to an extent) meritocratic if
investors refused to invest in teams lacking MBAs and advanced computer
science degrees? In this book, Illich advocates the kind of 'anarchic' world
we love the Internet for - an open world where new knowledge, new skills are
just a Google away - exchanged and shared in an extremely informal gift
economy (one that is forced, for better or for worse, on people trying to get
financial gain from it - due to piracy). Where creativity and work is open to
anyone (go read about him and then edit his wikipedia page - nothing would
make him happier).

------
sonink
I wouldnt really go so far to say that schools should be shut down because
they do serve one good purpose - making friends (even though you could do that
in other means), but its a good meeting point.

The big thing that needs to go from schools is structure and the focus on
'success'..

Essentially the fact that people from similar age groups are considered equal
- have to take the same courses - for the same amount of time - subject to the
same exams - and imparted an extremely flawed relative ranking system is all
horribly wrong.

In the real world the harder part is creating that structure - learning from
open markets, finding out what you want to do and from that figuring out the
courses you want to take - the people you want to learn from - the peers you
want to work with.

And success is not about getting good grades but more about taking your own
path which gets you your own happiness and the ones you care about.

~~~
bokonist
_I wouldnt really go so far to say that schools should be shut down because
they do serve one good purpose - making friends (even though you could do that
in other means), but its a good meeting point._

One of the worst aspects of government institutions is that we become
dependent on them. We then no longer remember how life could have existed
without them. Before the age of the university, young people would meet
interesting other people through fraternal associations, clubs, coffee houses,
and pubs. In these societies you could find a rousing chess game, talk
politics, start a charitable activity or even purchase group health insurance.
The University of Pennsylvania, was originally founded by Ben Franklin as
society for his friends to promote their mutual intellectual advancement. The
cost was nearly free. The idea that we need government to subsidize "making
friends", that finding a group of intellectual peers requires spending $50K a
year in tuition, is preposterous.

~~~
adrianwaj
There is a Noachide law to "Set up courts and bring offenders to justice."
This is a biblical law for Jews and Non-Jews alike, and it makes sense: even
the most righteous, well-behaved and respected people will have disagreements
with each other, and in a society with no government, implanting conflict-
resolution, law-giving and judgement institutions would be a very good
justification and first step to establishing one.

As long as a legal and judicial system is not abused to the detriment of the
society for which it serves, this aspect of government is very useful.

~~~
elai
You don't need a court system to resolve conflicts and disagreements. People
do it all the bloody time without involving the government

~~~
adrianwaj
Yeah, be my guest, try running a country without a judicial system. Go back
4000 years or more, or into a hunter-gatherer society...

------
brandnewlow
Is there a startup opportunity for a service that takes applications and
places students in apprenticeships, internships and specialized training in
fields they show aptitude in? Like a headhunter for high school kids.
Companies pay a finders fee to the startup, the startup team is responsible
for only passing along great candidates.

I'm a former Ivy League admissions officer. I could see a few people from that
world wanting to be a part of something like that. I read 2000 applications
while I was there and many, many of those kids could have benefited from an
alternative route...there just wasn't one.

~~~
brentr
I've thought about alternative routes, and my mind continually drifts back to
one idea: let capitalists run the education systems on a local scale. The key
part that I have not figured out is the motivation for enterprising
individuals to start their own schools while maintaining an environment that
is cheap enough to allow even the lowest of the low-income groups to send a
relatively bright child to the school.

------
bokonist
For those interested in a historical take on how the universities essentially
became a state church, I highly recommend the blog Unqualified Reservations.
This post is an excellent overview: [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2008/05/ol7-ugl...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2008/05/ol7-ugly-truth-about-government.html)

------
Maascamp
Since he did so much schooling himself (the only reason he could even write
this article and do the necessary research to be taken seriously is because of
school) it's hard to take him seriously

~~~
icky
_Au contraire._ If someone says that doing something or going somewhere is a
waste of time, I'd be much more inclined to listen if he had actually done so
himself.

------
KevBurnsJr
[http://www.theonion.com/content/news/6_year_old_stares_down_...](http://www.theonion.com/content/news/6_year_old_stares_down_bottomless)

