Name: Deschooling Society
ISBN: 9780714508795

Deschooling Society

Deschooling Society (1971) is a critical discourse on education as practised in modern economies. It is a book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention. Full of detail on programs and concerns, the book gives examples of the ineffectual nature of institutionalized education. Illich posited self-directed education, supported by intentional social relations in fluid informal arrangements.

What Hacker News says

zabzonkJun 2026

While I am in no way a supporter of AI cheating, or whatever we want to call it, I can tell you from experience that there is nothing more tedious or soul destroying than invigilating a written multi-hour exam. It put me off teaching in higher education.

IMHO to solve many problems we should go with Ivan Illich's ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society and make education about education, not testing and certification.

thread

gregjorJan 2025

I think it refers to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeschool/comments/1i8utxu/intervi...

All three of my kids (now adults) got schooled at home, then went on to college. More unschooling than homeschooling -- we didn't follow a formal curriculum. Of the group of homeschooling families we socialized with in Portland most of the kids went on to college. Back then we would get college recruiters, including from Ivy League schools, showing up at homeschooling events. I suspect that has a lot to do with the relatively affluent middle class who can afford to homeschool, but it helps that homeschooled kids actually perform well at college.

You can find some videos and accounts of unschoolers with feral kids who can't read. That happens too but not the norm in my experience.

If you haven't already found them, get John Holt's books, especially How Children Learn and How Children Fail. Also Grace Llewellyn and John Taylor Gatto. I liked the book Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich.

thread

gregjorMay 2024

The article misses the point of learning, confusing it with "education." I wonder how many members of the rationalist community have children.

I haven't read the book reviewed in the article, I no longer have school-age children. For anyone interested in the difference between learning and school/education, and some alternatives such as homeschooling:

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

How Children Learn and How Children Fail by John Holt

The Six Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

thread

ttoinouOct 2023

Read 90% of them yeah. It's amazing. If you like the free software movement, Tools for Conviviality is a must read. But my favorite is Deschooling Society

He defines his own terms throughout his bibliography and everything makes so much sense put together (you can apply his logic to the health system, language, knowledge through written books, industrial society, education, gender vs. sex etc.). He didn't tried to make his writing too complex to appear like an advanced intellectual nobody gets, he really tries to make his messages understood, so reading him is also not a pain.

Weirdly, only left wing people read him. But he's actually quite libertarian compatible

thread

gregjorOct 2022

> You clearly made choices in how you were raising your children, which means you were satisfying some constraints.

Well, yes, over time. At first we just wanted a child. We didn't have any plan. As a parent you have to make it up as you go -- the experience of other parents only goes so far. Before long I understood that I was dealing with an autonomous person, not someone I could mold or shape. Parents tend to overestimate the control and influence they have, which leads to conflict especially in the teen years and sometimes long into adulthood. I have friends my own age (past 60) who still resent their parents forcing them to play sports or go to violin lessons or sit through math tutoring.

You can find plenty of resources for homeschooling. I think of unschooling as a form of homeschooling. Traditional homeschoolers use a curriculum and try to duplicate at least some of the forms and rituals of traditional school at home. Unschoolers don't follow any curriculum, and involve their kids in the "real world" of adults rather than confining them in school or a simulation of it. The majority of homeschoolers in America do it for religious reasons, though you can find secular homeschooling groups in every city.

Some resources:

How Children Learn and How Children Fail by John Holt.

The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto (online) https://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/SevenLessonsTaughtI...

Dumbing Us Down and Weapons of Mass Destruction by John Taylor Gatto.

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich.

The Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner.

Anything by Maria Montessori.

We kind of fell backwards into it. Our first child went to Montessori school at first, she loved it. Then we moved and couldn't find a Montessori school that had openings (many have long waiting lists), so we enrolled her in public school. After a few weeks she got in trouble for reading a book in class "above her grade level" according to the teacher. She was in second grade reading a Nancy Drew book, bored waiting for the other kids to learn how to read. She cried about going to school after that because the teacher shamed her in class. So we didn't make her go and let her do her own thing. We told the school we planned to move, they never followed up. She went on to (easily) get a high school diploma and went to college. We didn't send our next two kids to school but left the option open, they decided to go later but mainly because of their friends.

We gradually found out about organized homeschooling groups and joined those, which led to lots of opportunities for sharing ideas and letting the kids socialize and play.

It helped that I was able to support all of us so my wife didn't have to work at a job, she did most of the work handling the kids. Unfortunately homeschooling only makes sense for middle- and upper-middle-class families who don't need school to provide day care while they work two jobs. We knew families with stay-at-home dads, and couples who had flexible jobs that allowed them to alternate. I came to believe that kids should have a parent around as much as possible, as a role model and person to answer questions, which is why I objected in the first place to the idea of hiring a nanny or sending kids to school.

thread

diffxxSep 2022

For anyone interested in the arguments in this piece, Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich is highly recommended.

thread