Deschooling Society (1970)

Re:Deschooling Society (1970) by alex_young on Monday July 13, 2020 @04:22PM (#23825198)

Deschooling has a lot of material to consume, and the term is pretty strong sounding, so I don't think it's surprising, but your conclusion that Illich wants to "dismantle the entire system" is far from most readings of his work.

Wikipedia [0] has a good summary of the idea IRT schooling in general - it's basically a philosophical position that people are better at learning when they actually have interest in a given subject, and that humans are also instinctive learners. Forcing people to consume curriculum without interest actually contributes to phobia of a subject.

There are many successful people who have been educated using the principles of deschooling. It's not about rejecting education at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling#Unschooling/Descho...

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Re:Deschooling Society (1970) by supernova87a on Monday July 13, 2020 @04:40PM (#23825332)

I'll have to read more about that, thanks.

I will say the idea of "teaching to the test" which this sounds like, is of course not a good approach. But not everyone can have a Socrates as teacher. All the more so when we refuse to fund schools as they should be. And not everyone is a Plato and can handle an inspirational deschooled approach.

Either way, we should fund it correctly. As others have said, we pay now, or we pay later. I prefer to pay now. It's cheaper.

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