Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society/Learning Webs

Notes for Chapter 6.

An Objection: Who Can Be Served by Bridges to Nowhere?

• "Only hindsight will allow us to discover if the Great Cultural Revolution will turn out to have been the first successful attempt at deschooling the institutions of society". See also: Socialist Education Movement.

Question: Do we have to invent a conspiracy theory to account for the way schools function (and dis-function) or is it possible that schools are the natural result of unavoidable limitations arising from brick-and-mortar schooling for all?

General Characteristics of New Formal Educational Institutions

• "A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known....It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational......Technology is available to develop either independence and learning or bureaucracy and teaching."

Question: Rather than looking for some kind of social revolution that would transform schooling, is it possible that new technology must come first? Can information technology change the function of bricks-and-mortar schools in a revolutionary way?

Four Networks

Can a community like Wikiversity provide elements of these "four networks"?

1. "Educational Objects....made available to students" - Open Educational Resources
2. "permit persons to list their skills" and "the conditions under which they are willing to serve as models for others who want to learn these skills" - Wikiversity:Userboxes
3. "a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry" - Portal:Reading groups
4. "Reference Services to Educators-at-Large" - participant lists