Ivan Illich, Learning Networks and me


Ivan Illich

Forty years ago, Illich wrote about the need for learning networks, peer-to-peer webs, and learning objects. We have yet to catch up with his vision.

In preparing a presentation I’ll be delivering with Paul Pangaro in Brazil next month, I’ve just re-read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society.

Deschooling Society (1971) is a book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention. It is a critical discourse on education as practised in “modern” economies. Full of detail on programs and concerns, the book’s assertions remain as radical today as they were at the time. Giving examples of the ineffectual nature of institutionalized education, Illich posited self-directed education, supported by intentional social relations in fluid informal arrangements:

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: educationalwebs 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.[1]

[Wikipedia]

In other words, Illich is saying what Bill Gates means when he says that even if high schools were working perfectly, they’d still be missing the boat, for they are fundamentally trying to do the wrong thing. (Note to self: call Bill.)

These words from Deschooling Society could have come from Informal Learning:

“Such criticism leads many people to ask whether it is possible to conceive of a different style of learning. The same people, paradoxically, when pressed to specify how they acquired what they know and value, will readily admit that they learned it more often outside than inside school. Their knowledge of facts, their understanding of life and work came to them from friendship or love, while viewing TV, or while reading, from examples of peers or the challenge of a street encounter. Or they may have learned what they know through the apprenticeship ritual for admission to a street gang or the initiation to a hospital, newspaper city room, plumber’s shop, or insurance office. The alternative to dependence on schools is not the use of public resources for some new device which “makes” people learn; rather it is the creation of a new style of educational relationship between man and his environment. To foster this style, attitudes toward growing up, the tools available for learning, and the quality and structure of daily life will have to change concurrently.”

The following passage got me thinking about how institutionalized learning has gotten in the way of my own learning. I’m sad things turned out this way.

Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators, and their cost has been inflated by forcing them to stimulate either environments or teachers.Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators, and their cost has been inflated by forcing them to stimulate either environments or teachers.The teacher is jealous of the textbook he defines as his professional implement. The student may come to hate the lab because he associates it with schoolwork. The administrator rationalizes his protective attitude toward the library as a defense of costly public equipment against those who would play with it rather than learn. In this atmosphere the student too often uses the map, the lab, the encyclopedia, or the microscope only at the rare moments when the curriculum tells him to do so.

I had the good fortune to attend some fantastic schools but I squandered many of the opportunities they offered me. I thought I was there to meet academic requirements, get good grades, and get the sheepskin. Learning was not part of the deal. Curiosity? Not much of that either.

One’s memories are always fuzzy. In time, they distance themselves from what was really going on. However, one example haunts me. I’m sure this one happened. Or, more precisely, didn’t happen.

Princeton has a fine art museum. I walked right by the entrance every day for two years on my way to the classrooms where I studied sociology and public opinion polling.

Mind you, I have since discovered that I really enjoy art. I’ve paid many a visit to the Louvre, Orsay, Prado, Uffizi, MOMA, the Met, the National Gallery, BFA, etc., etc., etc. But art was not one of my courses at college. In four years on campus, I never once set foot in the university art museum.

I missed innumerable opportunities on campus because they weren’t on the official, academic agenda and I was too sheepish to have an agenda of my own. I’m about to weep as I write this.

Here are some quotes that spoke to me as I re-read the book this week.

Cue Paul Simon…

    When I think back
    On all the crap I learned in high school
    It’s a wonder
    I can think at all
    And though my lack of education
    Hasn’t hurt me none
    I can read the writing on the wall
    <

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