9 Ivan Illich

Shalini Suryanarayana

Introduction

In this module you will learn about the views of Ivan Illich (1926-2002) on education. The first part of the module contains a biographical sketch of Ivan Illich and the second gives an overview of his thoughts on education as presented in Deschooling Society, his seminal work.

Ivan Illich: A Biographical Sketch

Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich was born in Vienna on 4th September 1926. His father was a Croatian and a Catholic hailing from an aristocratic family. His mother was Jewish. Due to his variegated ancestry Illich had Italian, Spanish, French, and German as native languages. He majored in Chemistry at the University of Florence, Italy. He then studied theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome from 1942 to 1946, and medieval history at Salzburg. Illich graduated from the University of Salzburg with a Ph.D. in history. His doctoral dissertation was on the well-known historian Arnold Toynbee. He prepared for his priesthood at the Gregorian University in Rome and was ordained in 1951. Illich became a Roman Catholic and served as a parish priest in one of New York’s poorest neighbourhoods – Washington Heights, in the north of Manhattan, which was then home to impoverished immigrants from Puerto Rico.

In 1956, at the young age of 30, Illich was appointed Vice Rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico. Being a part of the religious order gave Illich the opportunity to observe closely its organisation and functioning. He started developing a critical opinion on the church and its decrees. It was during his tenure at Puerto Rico that Illich developed a critical view on Vatican’s assertions on social issues such as birth control. It was also at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico that Illich met educational theorist Everett Reimer who was a proponent of deschooling and had authored several books on educational policy. A well-known work by Reimeris School is Dead: Alternatives in Education contained his ideas on the school system. The two became good friends and this association laid the foundation for the ideas that Illich developed on education.

The Emergence of a Rebel

Illich turned a vociferous critic of the form that contemporary western institutions had taken especially those related to education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development. In 1961, Illich founded the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC, or Intercultural Documentation Centre) at Cuernavaca in Mexico, which was ostensibly a research centre offering language courses to missionaries from North America and volunteers of the ‘Alliance for Progress Program’ initiated by the American President John F. Kennedy. Illich’s intent was to utilise that opportunity to examine the role of the Vatican in the so called “modern development” of the ‘Third World’. Illich was sceptical of these emissaries and viewed such interventions as a form of hegemony and, as such, an act of ‘war on subsistence’. He felt that missionaries deputed by the Church ought not to impose their own cultural values on the host cultures. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the CIDOC functioned both as a language school and a forum for free thinking intellectuals across America. After ten years of persistent criticism of the institutional actions of the Church, the CIDOC as an organisation came into the gaze of the Vatican as a conflicting agency. Illich was called to Rome for questioning. He then resigned from active priesthood in the late 1960s but continued to be perceived as a priest and occasionally conducted private masses. In 1976, eventually the centre was also shutdown due to a host of factors with consent from the other members of CIDOC. Some of the members subsequently continued language schools in Cuernavaca.

In the 1970s, Illich gained popularity among leftist intellectuals in France. His thesis on the popular historian Arnold Toynbee was well received. From the 1980s onwards Illich travelled in America and Europe, mainly dividing his time between the United States, Mexico, and Germany. He was appointed Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Science, Technology and Society at Penn State University, in the USA. He also taught at the University of Bremen and University of Hagen in Germany.

Illich’s Pedagogy

Ivan Illich became well known in 1970s, when his Deschooling Society was published. The work basically argued that the top-down management of schools renders students powerless. Illich observed that this ‘top-down management’ is a syndrome that is typical of the modern, technological economy and all its institutions, and in the specific context of education it is this that prevents people from real learning. His Tools for Conviviality was a critique of technology, in general. His work Energy and Equity also made Ivan Illich one of the most important theorists of the radical ecology movement of the 1970s.

Since the thrust of this module is on education, the following section explains the main argument enshrined in Deschooling Society. You are however encouraged to look up web resources and read other works by Illich in order to enrich your perspective and gain deeper insight into his thought.

Deschooling Society – Illich’s Seminal Work

The book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention was Deschooling Society (1971) a radical critical discourse on education as practised in ‘modern’ economies. The following section takes you on a journey of this classic text in order to acquaint you with an alternate perspective on educational institutions.

In his work Deschooling Society, Illich begins by elaborating what according to him education ought to be. Illich contends that education is meant to be primarily a liberating experience. This is indeed true. One expects education to liberate oneself from the darkness and bondage of ignorance. According to Illich, education should provide the opportunity for an individual to explore one’s potential and use initiative and judgement to develop one’s faculties and talents to the fullest. Or alternately at the very basic, education is to do with the learning of specific skills such as a language or a craft. Whether education is to do with the acquisition of specific skills or with its more lofty ideals, in either case, according to Illich schools as they exist and function are ill-equipped to achieve these goals. The existing format of school education itself is self-defeating in nature.

Illich argues that those who routinely use certain skills in their daily lives would by far be the best persons to teach those skills. He gives the example of Spanish speaking teenagers in New York many of whom would have been mere high school drop outs, who were engaged to teach Spanish to school teachers, social workers and ministers. They were trained to use a teaching manual designed for use by linguists with university qualifications and within just one week their training was completed. Once on the field within six months they had effectively accomplished their task of teaching Spanish to non-Spaniards. However, in actual practice we function within a system where such natural skills are not given due recognition or put to good use. More often than not such natively skilled persons do not have the official endorsement to impart their skills within the ambit of a formal system. The educational system demands that only persons with standardised credentials – those persons who are officially trained and possess certain qualifications and are certified to be teachers be allowed to teach. This is the case with all manners of skill training.

Further, real learning also implies involvement of the student in every aspect of the learning process. According to Illich most learning actually requires no teaching. In the present educational system students have little say in decision making with regard to their own education. Their involvement is limited to compliance with norms and standards. Expressing disappointment at this restrictive nature of institutionalised education, Illich makes a case for self-directed education, supported by volitional social relationships and conducted through fluid informal arrangements.

Illich therefore sees schools as repressive institutions that stifle creative expression, instil conformity and crush pupils into accepting the interests of the powerful and regarding these to be just. This to Illich is the “hidden curriculum” operating in schools. Students have no control over what they learnt and how they learn it. The teaching regime is an authoritarian one and in order to be regarded successful the student must learn to comply and conform. The best student is not necessarily the most learned or skilled or the most exceptionally brilliant. The best student is one who can perform best within the system. Those who excel at conforming are selected for the next level and are suitably rewarded. Illich feels that more than imparting skills and competence schools teach and reinforce a world view that equates “teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, (and) a diploma with competence” (1971:4). Since the school is the agency that grants the seal of credentials that have acceptance in the labour market it carries with it an immense coercive power to exact conformity. Graduating from such schools, students as citizens continue to use the same yardstick through their life in all walks of their lives.

Illich thus begins with a rather pessimistic assertion that:

“Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education–and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.” — 1971:2

The above passage carries the crux of Illich’s argument on schooling. Institutionalisation of education gives an impetus to the institutionalisation of society–a condition that Illich strongly abhors. To surmount the problem of an over-institutionalised society, Illich feels that the base has to be dismantled; the bottom line for him thus is de-institutionalising education for a de-institutionalised society.

Illich thus views the educational system as the basis of the problem with modern industrial society. School as the primary agency of socialisation becomes the first and most crucial stage in nurturing ‘mindless, conforming and easily manipulated’ citizens. In schools pupils are taught to conform and that conformity is rewarded. Individuality and originality are not given due respect. You may have observed for instance in your own career as a student that most institutions have standardised syllabi and examination patterns. Certain texts have to be consulted and answers have to be written according to pre-set norms. Attendance and other behaviour regulations have also to be complied with. While these are necessary for the survival of the institution and to maintain order in society no one can deny that such strictures tend to curb innovativeness and stifle creativity. As an individual a student learns deference to authority, gets lulled into regarding certain amount of alienation as the natural state of being, and learns to consume and value the services of the institution and thereby to forget how to think for himself / herself. There is commodification of education. In the prescribed format education is socially rewarded and hence becomes a coveted object of consumption to be devoured in ever increasing quantities.

For Illich these lessons (at school) prepare the individuals for their role as mindless consumers to whom the passive consumption of the goods and services of industrial society becomes an end in itself. Illich is also scathing in his attack of the role of advertising. Advertisements lure the consumer and give impetus to the ideology of accumulation. Responding to advertisements and the directives of those in power, people expend their resources that include time, money and energy in obtaining these much touted objects of desire – the products of industry. It must be noted that when Illich talks of commodities he means both goods and services including the services of professionals such as doctors, lawyers and even social workers. Indeed Illich is sceptical of all of these. People are schooled through the educational system to believe that they need the services of these professionals from time to time and throughout their lives. They are taught to show deference and respect for the authority of professionals and become devoted consumers of the services of doctors, social workers, lawyers etc. Through this indoctrination by the educational system they are trained to accept that those in authority know what is best for him and can decide about their well-being even better than they themselves. People develop dependency on the directives of the state and its arm the bureaucracy, and various professional bodies.

Illich argues that the modern industrial society in its current manner of functioning is ill equipped today to serve as the edifice for true happiness and fulfilment in life. He points out that in spite of the immense availability of commodities off the market and the purchasing power to acquire these, people remain dissatisfied. Illich laments the fact that even as trained professionals are incessantly deployed with ever more comprehensive programmes to solve social ills; misery, dissatisfaction and social problems continue to increase alarmingly. The consumer driven society has only one stock solution for all that ails it–the consumption of more and more goods and services.

The following passage quoted from Deschooling Society will give you a sense of Illich’s perception of education:

“If we do not challenge the assumption that valuable knowledge is a commodity which under certain circumstances may be forced into the consumer, society will be increasingly dominated by sinister pseudo schools and totalitarian managers of information. Pedagogical therapists will drug their pupils more in order to teach them better, and students will drug themselves more to gain relief from the pressures of teachers and the race for certificates. Increasingly larger numbers of bureaucrats will presume to pose as teachers. The language of the schoolman has already been co-opted by the adman. Now the general and the policeman try to dignify their professions by masquerading as educators. In a schooled society, war making and civil repression find an educational rationale. Pedagogical warfare in the style of Vietnam will be increasingly justified as the only way of teaching people the superior value of unending progress. (1971: 36-37)

Illich argued that “schools have developed to cope with four basic tasks: the provision of custodial care, the distribution of people within occupational roles, the learning of dominant values and the acquisition of socially approved skills and knowledge. Schools, like prisons, have become custodial organizations because attendance is compulsory and young people are therefore ‘kept off the streets’ between early childhood and their entry into work” (see Giddens, 2009: 837).

Schools according to Illich inculcate students with ‘passive consumption’ – an uncritical “acceptance of the existing social order – by the nature of the discipline and regimentation they involve. These lessons are not explicitly taught, but are implicit in school procedures and organization. The hidden curriculum teaches young people that their role in life is ‘to know their place and to sit still in it’” (see Giddens, 2009: 837).

Illich’s disenchantment with contemporary capitalist society is complete and abiding. Like Marx Illich also links the hegemony of the schools to the demands and requirements of the economic system. He is unequivocal in his contempt for and condemnation of the consumer driven economy. Though he does not overtly employ categories such as super structure and infrastructure, the domain of ritual for Illich also as in Marxist thinking plays the same opiate like role taking away from the dissonance between how things are and what they should have been like. However unlike Karl Marx, Ivan Illich does not relate the exploitative character of the modern economic system to the internal structure of the capitalist regime. His training in theology leads him to conceive of this as the result of the hubris of man born out of the success attained in the realm of technology – a hedonistic elation at such manifest conquests of nature by technology that makes man feel that he has gained control over nature.

This is what fundamentally distinguishes Illich from Marx. There is a certain cynicism in the thought of Illich bred out of his own disillusioning experiences with institutions. This disdain for institutions that is visible through much of Illich’s writing is completely different from Marx’s (perhaps) naïve optimism. Marx’s belief in the doctrines of the enlightenment gave a basis for the idea of progress from one social order to a better one in spite of the struggle and conflict that such progress through each stage would entail. Being close to institutional religion has perhaps taken away from Illich this innate faith in the goodness of human nature that Marx had. He also differs from Marx in the place accorded to the educational system in the larger social structure. For Marx it is the economy that constitutes the base of a social order. For Illich it is education that constitutes the base of society and it is that which needs to be overhauled in order to effect significant changes in the economy and society. Viewed that way Illich’s argument can be considered inverse of the one put forth by Marx. Illich’s contention is that ‘schools reproduce society’ and therefore lie at the very base of all social institutions and are the root of all social ills. Eradication of schools would therefore be the logical first step in eliminating the general malaise that exists in society. Illich’s suggestion for the abolition of schooling altogether is the result of this belief in the primacy of the educational institution and at the same time his estrangement with it. This cannot translate itself into a practical agenda for action even though Illich does come up some solutions for the problems that plague modern education.

The Solution

Through all the disillusionment Illich proposes certain solutions for the problems of modern education. His solution is misleadingly simple yet a radical one. The answer for Illich lies in the abolition of schools and the educational system as it exists. Hence the title “Deschooling Society”. As the school is the foundational institution de-schooling is the first logical step towards reform. “Deschooling is, therefore, at the root of any movement for human liberation” (1971: 34).”

Illich suggests the use of ‘skill exchanges’ and ‘learning webs’ to replace the conventional school. In the former an instructor teaches a skill he has to others who are seeking it. For instance, a Spanish speaking person can teach Spanish to those who need to learn. According to Illich, “Skill-teaching is a matter of repeating drills over and over …” (p.65). Illich recognises that acquisition of a skill need not always be an invigorating experience, in fact it is “all the more dreary for those pupils who need it most” (ibid). Further Illich recognises the need for some form of certification or credit system but is unable to provide a sustainable alternative.

The other mechanism suggested by Illich is the more comprehensive method of creation of learning webs. This is the educational method of choice for Illich. Learning webs create a network of teaching and learning among likeminded people that shall proceed on the basis of “creative and exploratory” learning through their own initiative. Illich elucidates how these webs may be constituted:

Through Reference Services to Educational Objects, which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these can be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories, and showrooms like museums and theatres; others can be in daily use in factories, airports, or on farms, but made available to students as apprentices or on off hours.

• Skill Exchanges, where people are enabled to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as models for others who want to learn these skills, and theaddresses at which they can be reached.
• Peer-Matching, a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.
• Reference Services to Educators-at-Large, who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self-descriptions of professionals, para-professionals, and free-lancers, along with conditions of access to their services. Such educators, as we will see, could be chosen by polling or consulting their former clients.”(1971:56)

Illich also advocates the use of technology, computers included, for the purpose of learning webs. According to Illich a users (of a skill) could identify themselves by name and address and describe the activity for which they seek a peer. A computer would send them back the names and addresses of all those who had entered the same description. Illich feels that this is a simple utility that can be used on a broad scale for the publicly valued activity of learning.

Illich has concluded that “deschooling” will destroy ‘the reproductive organs of a consumer society’ and lead to the creation of a social order where an individual can be truly liberated and fulfilled.

Deschooling Society: An Evaluation

The work Deschooling Society is not only a critique – it also contains alternative suggestions for restructuring the mode of teaching and learning throughout society. Through his book Deschooling Society Illich has made a rather compelling argument for the abolition of schools. Tempting though that may appear, the solutions suggested by Illich clearly border the utopian. His solution is not as simple as it is perhaps naïve and simplistic. Similar suggestions have often been put forth in the context of other social institutions like the family and the state. However whether one subscribes to the functionalist view point or not one has to willy-nilly acknowledge the need for some basic institutions in society which have therefore collectively been referred to as prerequisites. If schools were to be done away with whatever alternative form would take over the function of schools would also in time undoubtedly acquire a labyrinthic institutional structure and may even defeat the very purpose for which it was created. It has been observed for instance in the case of charismatic authority that the routinisation of charisma leads to the creation of organisational structures which override the very heart and soul of the entity. Illich’s criticism of the church itself is an illustration of the overpowering presence of the institutional aspect of charisma. Free flowing educational webs such as those Illich suggests if have to last beyond a generation and continue to sustain themselves need necessarily to develop self-perpetuating institutional structures. Hence doing away with schools would inevitably lead to their replacement with other structures with a plethora of possible latent and unintended consequences.

The nitty-gritty of the alternative systems suggested by Illich is also problematic. According to Illich the operation of a peer -matching network would be simple and one cannot fault that logic. Though the concept of learning webs is a useful one and as such these networks can function and do function as parallels to regular schooling as a supplementary mechanism, learning webs by themselves can by no means offer alternatives to schooling. There has to be some system of standardisation and ratification of the output of education. It is also quite curious that Illich calls for the use of advanced technology to support learning webs given his well-documented mistrust of technology. It is somewhat paradoxical that Illich should invoke the very technology that he has so consistently and vehemently derided, to run his learning webs.

Concerns could be raised about the ideas of Illich vis-à-vis private schooling. However, Illich should not be misinterpreted as a proponent of privatisation of education. When he talks of informal close knit teaching-learning groups he genuinely means that people get together through their own motivation rather than coercion to teach and learn. He is not spearheading the cause for a free market economy in the domain of education. It must be noted that Illich’s opposition was not merely to state run schooling but to schooling as such. Therefore his call for the dis-establishment of schools is not to be taken as a call for private schooling in educational services, but rather for the creation of a school-less society. If Illich appears to lean towards free market in education he made it clear that such an approach was only meant as a starting point towards achieving “deschooling” and not as the ultimate goal of the educational enterprise. In fact Illich actually opposed advocates of free-market education and felt they could be the ‘most dangerous category’ of educational reformers. So Illich’s ideas should not be misconstrued to propagate private schooling. Illich’s entire argument rests on the abolition of schooling as it has been conceived in modern society.

The other serious methodological concern is to do with the notion that the ills of the economic order can be remedied by revamping the educational system. This is not a realistic premise. As Marxist sociologists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have pointed out Illich has made a fundamental error of reasoning. As pointed out earlier Illich has seen the situation in its inverse. Rather than seeing schools as the basis of the problem and their removal as the solution, Bowles and Gintis argue that the real problem lies in the modern capitalist economic system. The social problems to which these reforms are addressed have their roots not primarily in the school system itself but rather in the normal functioning of the economic system. According to them deschooling would only produce “occupational misfits” and “job blues” which by themselves cannot lead to social transformation. In the ultimate analysis their perspective liberation can result only from a revolutionary change in the economic infrastructure of society.

Conclusion

Illich’s thesis on deschooling is thought provoking and provocative but it does not suggest a cogent workable agenda of action. There is no mechanism in Illich’s schema through which the anarchy created by the absence of schools can be redeemed. At the same time no one can deny the fact that Illich has drawn compelling attention to the overpowering self-defeating character of the modern educational system. His solutions may not be completely workable but we have to acknowledge that there is a problem and for that effort at least Ivan Illich must be resoundingly applauded.

References

• v Bowles, S and H. Gintis, 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• v Derber, Charles, William A Schwartz, and Yale Magrass. 1990. Power in the Highest Degree: Professionals and the Rise of a New Mandarin Order. New York: Oxford University
• v Gartner Alan, Frank Riessman, Colin Greer, and Ivan Illich, 1973. After Deschooling, What? New York: Harper & Row.
• v Giddens, Anthony. 2009. Sociology (6th Ed). UK: Polity Press.
• v Hern, Matt (Ed.).1996. Deschooling our Lives. Canada: New Society Publishers.
• v Illich, Ivan. 1971. Deschooling Society. New York, Harper & Row.
• v Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. New York, Harper & Row.