My Pensieve: A Basin of thoughts :: Ivan Illich-Deschooling Society

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

From My Pensieve: A Basin of thoughts :: Ivan Illich-Deschooling Society:

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 endeavour 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.

This is the opening paragraph from Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society (1971).  I have just started reading this text and I am already beginning to wonder why it wasn’t never a part of my required reading in my education program.

I think everyone interested in education should read Deschooling Society, but the question is when it will have the most useful impact…

Big5 personality test.

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

I’m a O65-C64-E59-A57-N66 Big Five!!