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Why We Must Disestablish School

Ivan Illich argues that schools have a negative effect on education in society. He claims that schools are not necessary for learning and have displaced other institutions in specializing in education. However, the document critiques Illich's arguments. It notes that while schools may have issues, Illich overgeneralizes in claiming schools are anti-educational everywhere. Schools provide orderly learning focused on education as a goal. They also allow diverse casual learning between students. Overall, while corruption exists, disestablishing schools is not the solution - the system needs reform to strengthen education.

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Abdullah Balouch
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
245 views3 pages

Why We Must Disestablish School

Ivan Illich argues that schools have a negative effect on education in society. He claims that schools are not necessary for learning and have displaced other institutions in specializing in education. However, the document critiques Illich's arguments. It notes that while schools may have issues, Illich overgeneralizes in claiming schools are anti-educational everywhere. Schools provide orderly learning focused on education as a goal. They also allow diverse casual learning between students. Overall, while corruption exists, disestablishing schools is not the solution - the system needs reform to strengthen education.

Uploaded by

Abdullah Balouch
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Why We Must Disestablish School

Illich

“All over the world the school has an anti-educational


effect on society: school is recognized as the institution
which specializes in education. ”

The quote above is from the article ‘Why we must disestablish school’,
written by Ivan Illich(1926-2002). The main theme of the article is very
well reflected in the quote. Illich challenges some of society’s most closely
held assumptions that schooling is necessary for education. According to
Illich, school is a redundant concept that has etched its place in society like
the church did. Illich argues that schools are not indispensable and that it
represents a corrupt institute that is catering to the rich with government
funding meant for the poor. He furthers his argument with the idea that the
society has been schooled to “confuse teaching with learning, grade
advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with
the ability to say something new.” Although Ivan has given plausible
arguments in the article, the quote, “All over the world the school has an
anti-educational effect on society: school is recognized as the institution
which specializes in education” needs further dissection as it might not be
sound and mislead readers.

Firstly, it can be easily deciphered from the language of the quotation that
the author is generalizing his claim that schools are anti-educational by
writing “all over the world..”. Considering that that illich’s research had
mostly been on the schools and schooling system of America, even if the
claim is true, it weakens the credibility of the authors claims. The claim that
school has an anti education effect on society has some truth to it but illich
writes it off as an absolute idea. The part of the quote ‘school is recognized
as the institution which specializes in education’ is meant to portray that
schools have taken the responsibility of education from other institutions
and that after school in order to make a career in another profession or
enroll in a college one is expected to have command over the school
curriculum. The claim that schools have taken the responsibility of
education away from other institutes is not substantiated because although
school is the primary institute relied on for education, that does not mean
that learning and education in other spheres is totally absent. The usage of
such a wide brush to paint a picture of schools as the anti protagonist
weakens illich’s claims.

Illich urges the states to consider better alternatives than the school due to
its “un educational effect on society”. In the article ‘Education, The
engagement and its frustration’, Oakeshott explains education as a
transaction through which a newcomer to the world is initiated to our
world. Oakeshotts’ stated transaction was not the casual transaction that
ends up in learning such as learning your first language from your parents
but rather an orderly initiation. The concept of casual learning, which Illich
uses to claim schools redundant, is not proper education because the
learning is a by product of the need to achieve some other objective, for
example learning to walk in adolescence is a by product of playing with
your parents. The schools do not have an absolutely anti-educational effect
on society because it is an orderly setting in which you start with the end
goal of learning from transaction in mind. The learning is not an accident
or a by product.

Furthermore, schools have all types of people in them and so they serve as a
pool in which each person learns from another. As a result the person gets
the casual learning as well as formal learning.

Illich's main complain is that he sees schools as a weakening of


independence and freedom of citizens claiming that it shouldn't define
one's future and be reflective of their education but then again although
there are other alternatives to school some of which have been and are
being tested, the fact that schools are not obsolete yet probably has to do
the fact that their is no other establishment or process that has been this
successful. On top of this, schools instill a sense of uniformity in students.
They instill a sense of responsibility in the students and teach them that
actions have consequences.

The ending note would be to state that although corruption has crept into
the schooling system, the solution is not to disestablish them but to
improve the system and rekindle the essence of education through them.
Schools have been around for thousands of years, and they are here to stay.

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