Political Philosophy: Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich.

ivenn LHD schooling society is one of
the most influential books in the history of political philosophy that you've never heard about why is it so influential well for one thing it does not have a lot of competition in philosophy of Education say what you will it's a really curious thing that in modern Western civilization so many people are employed in the education sector and there's so much that can change with philosophical debate in the education I mean really you might think that philosophy a ssin would be the most active bookshelf in the philosophy department of your academic elaborate but it's not there's a paucity of material in that department and there's a terrible paucity of new ideas now Ivan Illich therefore became a big fish in a small pond when he published this book back in 1971 it is also true that he came out with a style of rhetoric that was simultaneously appealing to people on the far left and people on the far right and kind of anarchists and free thinkers and Aunty anti-establishment figures in between now gonna say why am I making this video I am NOT making this video as an introduction to this book I think almost nobody who watches this video will read the book at most some of you will watch this video think oh that's interesting and maybe download a PDF from the internet and read a few paragraphs and throw this away the style of rhetoric here has not aged well and if you're really sincerely interested in education policy the politics of education reform you will very quickly come to the conclusion this book is now of absolutely no practical value zero for the debates we have going on in the education sector today but nevertheless this book is a major influential work in the history of philosophy especially in history of philosophy of philosophy of Education um it's still worth knowing about so if if you're wondering whether or not this video is gonna end in like a recommendation a thumbs up or a thumbs down should you read the book no no you shouldn't read the book and if you take a look at the book yourself if you if you put Ivan Illich into YouTube today and found this video because you thinking about whether or not this book was worth reading I can tell you confidently no it is not worth reading and I don't even see that with any hate in my heart um in his private life his faith and values Ivan Illich was one of these guys who was a mix of left-wing and right-wing impulses he was devoutly religious he was not just a little bit Christian and at the same time there's this profound disappointment with the edifice of Western civilization at a time when Latin America was in many ways uncritically emulating institutional and political arrangements that they saw in the United States and Western Europe so you know a country like Colombia or Bolivia was in an historical period where their idea of development was imitating the United States England France etc and this is a guy who was deeply dissatisfied with that and the whole book just rages against the concepts of organized education itself yes the social hierarchy and social inequality that is absolutely built into that system education and it indulges in the most dishonest and misleading rhetoric imaginable in support in that argument so look Ivan Illich what we gonna say for me the real moral of the story has to do with philosophy as opposed to empirical methods we have this tradition in Western Europe that you can be a philosopher and argue a point without the slightest concern about empirical reality whatsoever in this book this book is part of that proud tradition um writing in 1971 he was looking back on the reforms to education that had just transpired in the United States of America in the decade of the 1960s and this book is absolutely no interest in the facts absolutely no interest in an evaluation of what was successful was not successful in the decade of 1950 let me tell you some guys impart as broad brushstrokes nobody in 1971 was thinking that education in America had been better in the 1950s than it was in the 1970s and if you want one word to summarize why that is the one word would be racism the reforms that you know Ivan Illich just completely dismisses and condemns he just says oh they wasted so many billion dollars this money just disappeared absolutely no good came out of this period of reform and education as it's America come on this was a period when for African Americans for black people in America they went from having incredibly poor education to attempting I mean the concept of universal education tenable history United States America that's what Universal means Universal means they were for the first time making a sincere effort to give equal opportunities to blacks Hispanics non-white people in essence America and yes poor white people were also there was an open question of that and Ilic is coming straight out the gate in the first chapters of the book no it just totally withering dismissal that this period of reform and expansion education system in the United States this is just a total failure then it was self evidently a failure there's absolutely nothing good to be seen in it and guys you do not have to be a terribly close or attentive student of the history of education reform in a States to know that this is in the parlance of our time now you know what so again this this book does not use empirical methods it's not interested in chemical reality but looking through it I'm trying to find okay so what is the empirical basis for this theory this philosophy of education and he has just a few little examples again reflecting his Christian heritage he has an example of one of the church groups in the United States who decided that they needed to educate a bunch of their pastors a bunch of their preachers they needed to educate a bunch of their own religious leaders in the Spanish language in speaking Spanish so he gives this as a positive example they didn't rely on people who had formal credentials they didn't rely on people at a university education they didn't rely on a formal you know organized system of schooling they instead put an advertisement in the newspaper saying that they were looking for fluent speakers of the Spanish language to come in and spend time doing one-on-one practice with these Christian I'm sorry I forget which if they were priests or what their rank was but these Christian preachers and you know helping us be saying he said the majority of the people who saw the advertisement and volunteered were Ori I was a paid position it only lasted a few months he said the majority of them were high school dropouts or otherwise had no formal education and how to teach a language and this is a positive example he said the results were much much better than they could have gotten by then by you know putting these guys in a university classroom or what have you okay cute you think this is a basis for overturning the concept of a credential itself okay let me tell you something image I just paid a ton of money to have a formally qualified language teacher teach me the Chinese language the teacher I had did have a university education did have formal credentials did have a certain type of cultural refinement an educational background that a high school dropout would not have if you just think about it from the clients perspective from my perspective as a student I do not believe in legend I do not believe your one empirical example that I can find in this book there's probably one or two others I'm forget but there's almost nothing I do not believe that I will get equally positive results if I just put an ad in the newspaper and hire a high school dropout to teach me the Chinese language okay it's Chinese in my case it's Spanish significance I don't believe that and you know what the whole book is just ranting against snobbery the snobbery of the rich the school system does nothing but create the meaningless you know snobbery and oppression of one social class against another okay you know what you can call me a snob if I'm paying money to spend many many hours in the classroom with a teacher I know I'm willing to own up to that Ivan Ivan Illich I'm going to own up to the fact that I really enjoyed and appreciated my education more by having a highly refined highly educated person spend all those hours in the classroom with me teaching me this language as opposed to spending that time with a high school dropout so even if you think it is just snobbery if you dismiss the whole edifice of how the university education is were as nothing but snobbery that snobbery is still worth money to me as a client and this is using your example Ivan Illich which is at the sort of you know weak end of the spectrum you know like yes it is true if you want to learn Spanish you could learn Spanish just by spending quality time with your own grandmother if your grandmother speaks Spanish and you don't just by spending quality time with that school it's true that's possible you know what's not possible I don't think I could learn how to become a surgeon by just hanging out with some high schooler I don't think I can learn how to repair an aircraft engine to spec reliably without formal classroom education formal exams formal certifications when you look at other areas of the economy Ivan there are so many examples that don't favor you are philosophy of Education it's ridiculous like this book I see why it was so popular I see why it has been so influential the style of writing is just so rambunctious it's just the the seething discontentment with Western civilization leaps off the page these really over the top turns of phrase through it and you know it's okay in English I assume it sounds even better in Spanish translation I don't know I've been told by one of my regular viewers that it's still influential in France so I guess the French translation is just you know bristling with this anti-establishment sentimentality but as as a philosophy of education this is complete horseshit is it's not convincing at all and in terms of you know just looking at the project negatively as a critique of education I have to say you know the lack of empirical methods here means that it doesn't even hold up as a critique you can't read this it's published in 1971 you can't even read it in its own historical setting and say this still stands up today as a critique of what went wrong with education in the 1960s you know so that that's a pretty terrible weakness you know I'm sorry it neither holds up as a critique or a program for reform of Education that makes sense today in the 21st century nor does it hold up as a critique read in its own times so I'll just mention um you know this book one of the things that is praised for interestingly is that it anticipated the internet so the positive part of his plan you know the internet didn't exist in 1971 he said look instead of you know the university system he sets down some ideas that still today would be appealing to right-wing libertarians of having a voucher system of the government actually giving parents the money directly so that parents can decide for themselves how the money is spent on their child's education how the children get in the workforce oh there's more in formal education um interesting and he thinks that particular students can find particular tutors coaches through having a network of information where people conduct just interesting so in today's terms it's an interesting idea in 1971 and it really comes out of this kind of folklore centered view of skills I mean he's sitting there looking at the way knowledge is transmitted in a traditional village setting in Latin America and again which examples you choose can be decisive you know so yes he does point out again and again through the books that most people learn to speak a language not in the classroom but by spending time with their grandparents or by he gives the example he says that more people learn language through their girlfriend through falling in love you know not through university education okay interesting interesting example but how do you learn how to repair an aircraft engine how to disassemble and reassemble an aircraft engine and how do you write an exam proving you can do that in a reliable way that doesn't put people's lives in harm's way you know which examples you select are are crucial but in the 1970s there was a political term that was popular mostly with right-wingers you know folk ways of looking at folklore and traditional knowledge and villages and he's saying look so somebody in this village knows how to repair a truck knows how to operate farm machinery knows how to use a loom traditional weaving to create clothing why can't we just have an Internet of ideas where there's one person who posts on the Internet they want to learn how to weave and somebody else posts they're an old grandmother they want to teach someone out of weave and there's no classroom there's no University and money is paid person gets paid to coach somebody else and human skills are transmitted in this way and it's so much more effective everybody interesting and it's interesting that he said that back in 1971 when there was no such thing as an internet cool guys be real okay today on Craigslist who's gonna do this who is this gonna work for I'm not say it's gonna work for nobody okay right now if I want to learn Hebrew I don't but let's say I decide I want to migrate to Israel how really am I gonna learn Hebrew am I gonna put an ad on Craigslist and set up this type of completely informal arrangement am I going to at the opposite extreme formally enroll in a university program that will give me a credential write an exam or half way in the middle there are other types of institutionalized learning in education like obviously churches and synagogues um in the history of education both medieval and modern there are a lot of other forms of institutionalized and formalized education other than you know the American model of the universe system but we have to be honest with ourselves about the reasons why the American system is so successful look China I live in China right now has one of the most extreme histories imaginable of reforms to education but at the end of that process having tried out so many different extreme ideas the system they've settled on really to say they were open to new ideas is an understatement this is one of the in the history of the 20th century China must have the greatest diversity of attempts to totally disassemble and reassemble education from the ground up and in the end the system that created is not so different from the American system of Education working from empirical methods those questions are really worth asking and worth answering not that the American Standard is an ideal that Columbia or Brazil should uncritically aspire to I mean in a sense Ivan Illich has a really good point there we need to question this we need to think very carefully about why are we maybe unwittingly imitating both the advantages and disadvantages of the philosophy of Education of the modern Western world but there are hard criteria that education ultimately has to correspond to either we can trust you with this job to disassemble and reassemble this aircraft engine or we can't either you are a real surgeon or you're not and even for me I mean he chooses the example of language education because it favors his argument why did I want to be in a formal university setting instead of just learning Chinese hanging out with my girlfriend or you know these more informal examples he gives rather than this kind of folklore approach or rather than just putting an ad on Craigslist and saying hey does anyone have an elderly grandmother you know who speaks Chinese fluently you know in Vancouver there must be a ton who has a bored grandmother in Vancouver who speaks Chinese their first language who can sit down and spend 300 hours with me tutoring me in Chinese why do you think that from the perspective of the student there are compelling reasons to prefer a formal education setting as opposed to inform one from the perspective of the employer there are just so many reasons why you're gonna hire someone who has a credential someone who has not only learned Chinese but can prove to you that they learn Chinese guys Ivan Illich dreamed a dream and he remains a footnote in the history of philosophy education one of the most influential guys who ever did it if you want to read this book you can dream along with them but for me the real moral the story is philosophy is a problem-solving method and we have to be looking at empirical evidence real-world evidence facts from the ground up at the beginning and the middle and the end of our inquiries