'De-Schooling' - Making School a lot Less like School

“Equal educational opportunity is, indeed, both a desirable and feasible goal, but to equate this with obligatory schooling is to confuse salvation with the Church.”  (Illich, 1970).  This statement has profound meaning for me because I grew up believing in conservative Christian dogma, and I attended a conservative Christian University in the South.  Part way through my undergraduate education, my theological beliefs shifted because I confused the organization of ‘church’ with the idea of ‘salvation and grace.’  In short, I didn’t find the organization of church graceful or salvific, and so I left.  In hindsight, I realize my mistake.

Illich’s analogy is something I have tasted firsthand in the spiritual realm, and I now believe I am sampling it anew in the educational domain.  This past week, I completed my theory of learning paper for Richard Elmore’s Instructional Leadership course for the second time, since I was not satisfied with my level of mastery nor my grade the first go round.  Hence, I rewrote it and incorporated new ideas and research into the paper.  In completing it the second time, four weeks after finishing it for the first time, I am stricken by how my views of schooling have changed.  Just the other day in Kay Merseth’s reform course, she told the class that her daughter didn’t learn to read until the third grade; she was a late bloomer.  I find myself in the same boat, a sort of ‘de-schooling’ late bloomer.  I read Illich a month ago, and his theory of de-schooling is now settling in, especially when I consider them in conjunction with the Sugata Mitra video.  Thinking about the Illich article and the Mitra SOLE model as two partners pedaling together on a tandem bike brings the theory of ‘de-schooling’ down to the pavement for me.  I feel like I can see how it could work in our society.  Moreover, I see in Mitra’s model that it is a class – of sorts - entirely arranged for difference; by that, I mean that students are not limited to a authoritarian’s prescribed method of accessing information.  In contrast, Mitra’s SOLE model provides ultimate flexibility, and arguably encourages students to access new information in a way that is meaningful to them. 

Furthermore, based on this past Monday’s class where we viewed slides of the Victoria Australia schools, I see another model of ‘de-schooling’.  Illich writes, “The educational guide or master is concerned with helping matching partners to meet so that learning can take place.”  To that point, Elmore described children designing their own curriculum in Victoria schools, and he described the teachers as ‘matching partners’, to the extent that they guide and gauge student development towards content mastery, never imposing curriculum but rather matching learning needs with resources for developmental aid. 

In closing, I feel like I have seen two models – SOLEs and Victoria Schools – of schools that are organized for difference.  These two models have taken the theoretical idea of ‘de-schooling’ and made it tangible.  

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society.  London:  Marion Boyars, 1970, “Why We Must Destablish School,” and “The Phenomenology of School,”