Free at Last: Escaping Educational Assembly Lines

• In Event: Establishment De-Zombified: Moved by Stories of Illich, Revolutionary Friendship, Inversion, and a Hospitality of Belonging

Abstract

Fish swim, birds fly, people learn, John Holt pronounces, celebrating common sense, too commonly ignored. Genius is not a “scarce resource” -- despite its artificially engineered scarcity by modern institutions. Learning in freedom from a very young age, we acquire skills when not relocated into cemented walls of artificially-induced stupidity. Studying, Ivan Illich reiterates, is joy-filled when people freely follow their curiosity and their deepest impulses to stand under in order to understand the mysteries of Creation. Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society proposes neither school closures nor dis-respecting teachers. Instead, Illich urges “dis-establishing” state controlled mandatory curricula and pedagogies in systemic credentialing factories. He urges escaping professional pyramids of sacrifice: constructing the counter-productive hierarchies of professional educators.

Authors

• Madhu Suri Prakash, Pennsylvania State University

• Dana L. Stuchul, Pennsylvania State University