We have all learned most of what we know outside school. – Ivan Ilich, Deschooling Society

I want to preface this article by saying that I am not anti-education in the least. If you, like some folks, think that the alternative to institutionalized (that is, public or private) schooling is sitting in a field and learning from the flowers (an educational system that will qualify one to flip burgers until death), please suspend that belief for the next several minutes. I believe very strongly that “school” is adverse to most natural learning, and I can support the following aspect of this belief logically and calmly, given a few moments of your time.

Kindergarten. For many, this is our first taste of the next thirteen (or more) years of our lives in school. In kindergarten, we learn who our teacher is, where the cloakroom is, and how we are to behave inside the new structure, the classroom. We learn to sit when and where we are asked, to eat when it is time to eat, and, sometimes, to speak only when we have raised our hand and been selected.

Unless you are innately rebellious, or are otherwise inclined to resent these minor modes of crowd control, this is likely unoffensive. In all honesty, I see nothing wrong with teaching children to respect their fellows by learning to live in a somewhat orderly fashion. While taking turns and obeying rules may be some of the foundations of institutionalization, they are also among the roots of empathy, and it would be foolish to forget that.

Unfortunately, for the next five years of my public education (after which I became home schooled), these were the most important lessons repeated. Basically, I learned to do what I was told. Again, let me clarify that doing what one is told to do is not necessarily wrong. There are many situations every day where it’s the best thing to do. Rather, internalizing the belief that one must do as one is told is what’s wrong. If the difference isn’t clear, read on.

I personally spent most of my institutionalized education in a public school system whose own means of grading ranked it among the very lowest in the nation. This poor quality “education” undoubtedly amplified the inherent flaws in the institutionalized school system, and mingled those inherent with those specific to my situation. I realize that this makes my own experience in school biased by what was simply an unusually poor situation. Still, I like to believe that, through research and other learning, I can present a fairly objective view on the matter of institutionalized vs. non-institutionalized schooling.

The greatest inherent flaw, as I see it, is:

Institutionalized school does not promote individuality.

That’s a large accusation; let me qualify it.

One of the most necessary aspects of institutional schooling is uniformity. It comes from its complete necessity, not some intentional evil. With thousands of children in a single grade, it is vital that they learn how move, be still, speak, and be silent when an authority figure requests it, and vital that they comply. But, unavoidable such uniformity is, it is counter-intuitive to learning, and, after leaving the education system, counterproductive to working in any but the most menial of jobs.

[School] forcibly snatches away children from a world full of the mystery of God’s own handiwork, full of the suggestiveness of personality. It is a mere method of discipline which refuses to take into account the individual. It is a manufactory specially designed for grinding out uniform results.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Out of the necessity for average actions and averaged scoring comes the real peril of creating average, uniform people. While I was in middle and high school, I saw adults, not much older than I, bumbling at their jobs, appearing very stupid. In the hazy year after I left public school and began home school, I saw myself as very stupid. But those graduates and I weren’t stupid; our minds were simply numbed with a certain kind of fear. It wasn’t the kind of fear that causes the flight or fight reaction. It was probably a primal response more like a rabbit catching sight of something slithering in the grass. When I didn’t know the approved response to something, I froze.

There were plenty of instances in which I opted to do nothing rather than think for myself, and more still in which I continued to do something counterproductive just because I’d been told to. I wasn’t stupid. I had been taught to obey rather than think.

If, at virtually any point in my public school education, I deviated from my instructions (even if it was an improved method of accomplishing the same task) I was reprimanded. This was partly because the particular education system I was in was so backwards and desperate for control that it really did reward mindless obedience over ingenuity in its meanest manifestation. Even so, the same practice (to a far lesser degree) happens in all institutionalized schools, from the need for uniformity.

Each of us, I believe, have a unique mind. The combination of our hardwired, chemical processes, individual life history and circumstances, and intuition and emotion combine to form a creative system that is uniquely our own. When this process is stifled, our personalities and individuality are stifled as well.

Again, I appreciate that my experience is probably not typical, and not all (or even most) institutionalized schools are as adverse to learning as the one I attended. If you like, take my personal examples as extreme examples, enlarged to give a clearer view of the pervading flaw.

Creativity is dependent upon individuality and a degree of rebellion. We need uniformity as we need involuntary bodily functions like breathing or blinking, to complete the countless number of small, daily, mundane activities that keep our world ordered. However, without a counterbalance of questioning, disassembling and reassembling, and innovation, we can quickly find ourselves in a rather dire, or at least very stagnant, situation.

In kindergarten, I learned how to act uniformly, which is an important lesson. However, in the larger view, this is not as important as learning when to act uniformly, and it seems a terrible waste of time to spend so much of one’s “education” learning and relearning the same skill.

- Lilli Blackmore

     For years now, various debates about the effectiveness, and even necessity, of universities and institutionalized schools have been a part of world politics. On one extreme, some decry educational institutions as irrelevant and outdated; on the other, some insist that higher learning is the only way modern human beings can learn how to contribute to society. In recent years, with the introduction of the internet into our daily lives, new solutions to the arguments against institutionalized education — or at least against its absolute necessity, have arisen. The internet, and all the communicative and educational possibilities it carries, may be relatively new, but the conversation regarding its place as an educational tool is not. In this article, I will discuss a fragment of one man’s much larger vision regarding the re-evaluation of standard education, and how it relates to our contemporary world.

Ivan Illich wrote this in 1970, in his book Deschooling Society:

Creative, exploratory learning requires peers currently puzzled about the same terms or problems. Large universities make the futile attempt to match them by multiplying their courses, and they generally fail since they are bound to curriculum, course structure, and bureaucratic administration. In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.

Let me give, as an example of what I mean, a description of how an intellectual match might work in New York City. Each man, at any given moment and at a minimum price, could identify himself to a computer with his address and telephone number, indicating the book, article, film, or recording on which he seeks a partner for discussion. Within days he could receive by mail the list of others who recently had taken the same initiative. This list would enable him by telephone to arrange for a meeting with persons who initially would be known exclusively by the fact that they requested a dialogue about the same subject.

Well, Illich just described an internet chat room or an interest-based forum, didn’t he? The technological limitations of the time involved using the postal system, but the basic concept is one that we’re all (assuming that computer literacy has brought you to this article), familiar with.

It’s probably more radical to consider internet communications about a novel or film as a “scholarly” interaction than it is to think of Illich’s computer-mail system in the abstract. I believe this has to do with our belief in the idea that only those “qualified”–whatever that means–to teach ought to impart knowledge. There is a strange kind of taboo around the idea of non-schooled peers gathering to discuss a scholarly topic and come to their own conclusions about it.

Illich also says:

Matching partners for educational purposes initially seems more difficult to imagine than finding skill instructors and partners for a game. One reason is the deep fear which school has implanted in us, a fear which makes us censorious. The unlicensed exchange of skills–even undesirable skills–is more predictable and therefore seems less dangerous than the unlimited opportunity for meeting among people who share an issue which for them, at the moment, is socially, intellectually, and emotionally important.

A similar fear exists about home schooling, usually in those who don’t have a good grasp of what general alternative school involves. I spoke to someone once who was very concerned about home schooled children being unable to know what was real or invented if they educated themselves. Perhaps he feared we would end up like young Mr. Frankenstein, self-educated and therefore ignorant of the fact that alchemy was outdated and debunked. Conveniently, the internet provides the most helpful tool in preventing that sort of insularity.

Anywhere an internet connection exists (provided it offers unregulated access to email or websites), human beings can interact on an individual basis. Not only does this allow for a nearly infinite number of view points on any single event, but it also allows for access to perspectives on less current topics, such as history, geography, art, and so forth. Has there ever been a time when so many people had access to so many perspectives?

My above mentioned friend was afraid that the self-educated would grow up espousing strange views if they lacked the overseeing institution of school to tell them what was Real and what was not. Without going into too much detail in this article, let me just say that I personally am far more frightened of children (or anyone) receiving a single, panel-approved view of history, politics, literature, sociology, etc. than I am of children searching for truth themselves, particularly when they have such unlimited resources via the internet.

Getting back to the Internet as an existing, modernized version of Illich’s computer-mail system, I think another element of the hesitation to treat internet discussions seriously is our familiarity with the internet and its role in our lives. Logging into a forum and discussing one’s interpretations of a film or book is something done for fun. It is not scholarly. My hypothesis is that we feel what is published in a journal by scholars is legitimate, but what is discovered by regular, albeit intelligent folks, even those using a plethora of resources, is not. I believe that it comes down to the same internalized (and wrong) belief that we can discuss things among ourselves and come to intelligent results, but we must be taught or told things by “qualified” people for the results to be respectable.

Once we overcome this belief, we become responsible for a little more of our own education.