1. INTRODUCTION
Ivan Illich is recognized as one of the educational thinkers. Ivan Illich
is the father of ‘deschooled education’, who condemned the school system and
the schools for exercising anachronistic functions that fail to keep
pace with
change and protect the structure of the society that produced them.
2. LIFE HISTORY
Ivan Illich was born in Vienna University of Florence in Italy Gregorian University
in Rome , he obtained his doctorate in history from
the University of
Salzburg New
York
Ivan Illich published his principle
works in the field of education in mid 1970s. In his most famous article, ‘School:
The Sacred Cow’ published in 1968, he criticizes public schooling for its
centralization, internal bureaucracy, rigidity and the inequalities that it
harbors. His most important work is ‘Deschooling Society’ first published in
English in 1970 and later in Spanish in 1973.
3. CONTRIBUTION TO THE EDUCATION FIELD
3.1 Schooling
According to Ivan Illich, ‘schooling
is the production of knowledge, the marketing of knowledge, which is what the
school amounts to draws society into the trap of thinking that knowledge is
hygiene, pure, respectable, deodorized, produced by human heads and amassed in
a stock. I see no difference between rich and poor countries in the development
of these attitudes to knowledge.
3.2 Deschooling
Liberating the children from the clutches
of school education is called ‘Deschooling’. It is based on the needs of its
environment, to the realties of people’s lives and to the efficient acquisition
of socially relevant knowledge.
Ivan Illich is of the view that school education has no links with
the requirement of the society. Only that education acquired by attending the
school regularly is valued. The symbol of present day education is attendance,
examination and certificates. Ivan Illich is against this education. Education or
learning is one’s activity.
3.3 Four
central ideas
In Deschooling
Society, Ivan puts forth the central ideas that suffuse the whole of his work
on education:
1.
Universal education through
schooling is nor feasible. It would be more feasible if it were attempted by
means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools.
2.
Neither new attitudes of
teachers towards their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or
software, nor finally the attempt to expand the teacher’s responsibility until
it engulfs the pupils lifetimes will deliver universal education.
3.
The current search for new
educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional
inverse; educational webs which heighten the opportunity for learning, sharing
and caring.
4.
The ethos, nor just
institutions, of society ought to be ‘deschooled’.
4. IVAN ILLICH METHODS OF EDUCATION
v An open system of education is necessary.
v One should be given opportunity for education when it is necessary
for him.
v Outside the school, new learning opportunities should be provided.
v One should be allowed to learn according to his own pace and will.
v Alternative education system should promote humanitarian values and
develop many skills.
5. MYTH CONCEPT
According to Illich, the prestige of
the school as a supplier of good quality educational services for the
population as a whole rests on a series of myths. These myths are:
5.1 The
myth of institutionalized values
This myth is grounded in the belief
that the process of schooling produces something of value. That belief
generates a demand. It is assumed that the school produces learning. The existence
of schools produces the demand for schooling. Thus the school suggests that
valuable learning is the result of attendance, that the value can be measured
and documented by grades and certificates. Illich takes the opposite view: that
learning is the human activity that least needs manipulation by others; others
learning is the result not of instruction but of participation by learners in
meaningful settings. School makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth
with elaborate planning and manipulation.
5.2 The
myth of measurement of values
According to Illich, the
institutionalized values school instills are quantified ones. For him personal
growth cannot be measured by the yardstick of schooling but, once people have
the idea schooled into them that values can be produced and measured, they tend
to accept all kinds of rankings.
5.3 The
myth of packaging values
The school sells curriculum, and the
product that is produced through the curriculum production process appears like
any other staple product. Here the pupil is the consumer of that product and
the teacher is the distributor who delivers the finished product to the
consumer, that is, the pupil, whose reactions are assessed to provide research
data for the preparation of the next model, which may be ‘ungraded’, ‘student-designed’
‘visually-aided’, or ‘issue-centered’.
5.4 The
myth of self-perpetuating progress
Illich talks not only about consumption but about production and
growth. He links these with the race for degrees, diplomas and certificates,
since the greater one’s share of educational qualifications the greater one’s
chances of a good job. For Illich the working of consumer societies if founded
to a great extent on this myth, and its perpetuation is an important part of
the game of permanent regimentation.
6. TOOLS FOR CONVIVIALITY
One of the major works of Illich that
followed “Deschooling Society” is “Tools for Conviviality”. In this, he
proposes a rival strategy that limits the growth of industrialized societies
and suggests a new kind of organization for them, to be achieved through a new
concept of work and ‘deprofessionalization’ of social relations including
education and the school.
According to him, a convivial society “does not exclude all schools.
It does exclude a school system which has been perverted into a compulsory
tool, denying privileges to the drop-out. I am using the school as an example
of a phenomenon to be elsewhere in the industrial world this claim is analogous
to my observation on the two types of institutions of society. In every society
there are two ways of achieving specific ends, such as locomotion,
communication among people, health, and learing. One I call autonomous, the
other heteronomous. In the heteronomous mode, I move myself. In the heteronomous
mode I am strapped into a seat and carried. In the autonomous mode I heal
myself, and you help me in my paralysis, and I help you in your childbearing. In
every society and in every sector, the efficiency with which the goal of the
sector is achieved depends on an interaction between the autonomous and the
heteronomous modes”.
7. DEFECTS OF REGULAR SCHOOLING
Deschooling society means the denial
of professional status for the second oldest profession, namely teaching.
Ø It is unnecessary to go to school and study for the development of
the society. So the society should cut off its relationship with school
education.
Ø The present day schools, instead of removing inequalities, only
increase the inequalities. When will an egalitarian society be formed? Equalitarian.
Ø Regular educational opportunities are only suitable for upper class
people. It is of no use to the poor people.
Ø The lessons and concepts taught in schools at present ate not
according to the demands of the time.
Ø For a long time, in our schools, the same time-table, examination system,
evaluation techniques are followed.
8. CONCLUSION
Today, Illich’s
thoughts have found their way into the education system under a variety of
labels viz. non-formal education, lifelong education etc. It can never be
denied that his ideas and thoughts on education influenced a considerable number
of educators. Many of his ideas have universal validity, both for the school
system and other related institutions.
Ivan Illich says that through Educational Resource Centre, Community
Resources and Learning Groups students should be liberated from the control of
the teachers and create and egalitarian society with a spirit of service to
society.
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