Deschooling Society/ Ivan Illich

Society without Schools - The Austrian Ivan Illich, who began working in Mexico in 1962, proposed the deschooling of society. According to him, most useful knowledge was learned outside of school, in contact with family, sociopolitical and cultural realities. Once the expensive and irrational "monopoly" of public education was abolished, an educational system should be established that could simply ensure that all who wished to learn, in any subject, had access to appropriate knowledge. From a selective and authoritarian "funnel", the educational system would become an egalitarian "exchange network" between curious spirits, freed from all teaching authority. Only a total renovation of educational institutions, according to Illich, would bring about the expected social change.

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