Illich (1926-2002) deschooling – school as the ‘new Church’

As an ordained priest Illich had worked with the poor in Peurto Rico but at 43 resigned from the Catholic Church because of what he saw as its institutional dominance and flaws. It was this that led to a similar evaluation of the ‘new Church’ schooling. This led to his seminal text Deschooling Society’ but this was not his title bt the title applied by his publisher. In fact it is misleading  as he doesn’t argues not for the abolition of schools but their disestablishment, the separation of school and state, just as the Church and State were separated in the US.

‘Schooling’ for Illich confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment. Schools are separated, unworldly places that lead to psychological impotence and we become hooked on their role in society to the extent that other institutions are discouraged from assuming educational tasks.

Deschooling

We are ‘schooled’ in institutions run by technocrats that take responsibility away from otehrinstitutions for social responsibility and learning. . It is all based on an illusion, he claims, the illusion that most learning is the result of teaching. Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside of school. Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Most learning is, in fact, a by-product of some other activity defined as work or leisure.

He attack schooling on three fronts:

1. Age – grouping according to age

2. Teachers and pupils – that learning is the result of teaching

3. Full-time attendance – incarceration of the young

4. Packaging instruction with accreditation

Adults tend to romanticise their schooling, yet most, when pushed, recognise the smothering atmosphere of the classroom and feeling of incarceration in school. Even supporters of schools and schooling recognise that the school has remained largely unchanged since Victorian times with their classrooms, desks, terms, prefects, rituals, curricula, bells, corridors, timetables, prize givings and reports. It will be all too familiar.

Educational diversity

By deinstitutionalising education, making it non-compulsory, we can return to its true, authentic value and improve quality. We need to break our diction to traditional schooling and break its almost religious hold on our consciousness. Fascinatingly, he related this obsession with compulsory schooling to the religious idea of original sin, that we are born imperfect and have to atone. It was not the abolition of schools that concerned him but the recognition that a wider and more diverse landscape was needed. Illich sees alternatives in skills-centres, educational credits and

Technology and education

the ‘possible use of technology to create institutions which serve personal, creative and autonomous interaction’. Well before the age of the internet he foresaw its power in education and knowledge he saw an alternative to schooling through a network or service which gave each person the same opportunity to share his/her concern with others motivated by the same concern. His core idea was that education for all means education by all. He sees us providing the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all education through the teacher. In this sense, the inverse of school is possible, recommending four types of educational resource:

1. Reference services to Educational Objects

2. Skill exchanges

3. Peer-matching

4. Reference services to Educators-at-large

One could argue that this is starting to happen with the advent of technology in learning, through search, free content in Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and Open Educational Resources and social media.

University

His critique of the University system is as fierce as that of schools. He sees them as having betrayed their original values, becoming the ‘final stage of the most all-encompassing initiation rite the world has ever seen’. In practice, it is here that students redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This, along with unlimited opportunities for legitimised waste and the rising costs makes them ripe for reform. University, he claims, creates skills shortages by institutionalising professions such as nursing and teaching.

Once exposed to intense ‘schooling’ it is very difficult to free oneself from school and the expectations it sets. He is also right in noticing that this re-emergence of values comes through in educational reform where he saw that the solution to bad schooling is always more schooling. He also resists the idea of turning our entire culture into a school through ‘lifelong learning’ and attacks the ‘teacher-as-therapist’ culture. He is opposed to pushing out the walls of the classroom until they envelop everything we do in our lives.

Conclusion

Although disparaged by many educators and academics, unsurprisingly, as he attacks their schooling institutions and outlook, Illich remains a huge influence on educational thought. His critique of schools is regarded as extreme but intellectually profound and related to the corrupt influence of institutionalisation, rather than political ideology or oppression. Above all, his ideas for alternatives, such as ‘learning webs’, were prescient.

Bibliography

Illich, Ivan (1973a) Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Illich, Ivan (1973b) Celebration of Awareness. A call for institutional revolution, Harmondsworth Penguin.

Illich, Ivan (1975a) Tools for Conviviality, London: Fontana.

Illich, Ivan (1976) After Deschooling, What?, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.

Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm

Excellent profile and summary of thought

http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html

Full text of Deschooling Society (a must read)

Illich (1926-2002) – Deschooling… prophetic on technology…

As an ordained priest, Croatian-Austrian Illich had worked with the poor in Puerto Rico but at 43 resigned from the Catholic Church because of what he saw as its institutional dominance and flaws. It was this that led to a similar evaluation of the ‘new Church’ of schooling and his seminal text Deschooling Society, not his title but the title chosen by his publisher. In fact it is misleading, as he argues not for the abolition of schools but their disestablishment, the separation of school and state, just as the Church and State were separated in the US. ‘Schooling’ for Illich confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment. Schools are separated, unworldly places that lead to psychological impotence and we become hooked on their role in society to the extent that other institutions are discouraged from assuming educational roles and tasks.

Deschooling

We are ‘schooled’ in institutions run by technocrats that take responsibility away from other institutions for social responsibility and learning. It is all based on an illusion, he claims, the illusion that most learning is the result of teaching. Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside of school. Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Most learning is, in fact, a by-product of some other activity defined as work or leisure.

He attack schooling on several fronts:

1. Age – grouping according to age

2. Teachers and pupils – that learning is the result of teaching

3. Full-time attendance – incarceration of the young

4. Packaging instruction with accreditation

Adults tend to romanticise their schooling, yet most, when pushed, recognise the smothering atmosphere of the classroom and that feeling of incarceration in school. Even supporters of schools and schooling recognise that the school has remained largely unchanged since Victorian times with their all too familiar classrooms, desks, terms, prefects, rituals, detentions, curricula, bells, corridors, timetables, prize-givings and reports. 

Educational diversity

By deinstitutionalising education, making it non-compulsory, we can return to its true, authentic value and improve quality. We need to break our addiction to traditional schooling and break its almost religious hold on our consciousness. Fascinatingly, he related this obsession with compulsory schooling to the religious, Calvinist idea of original sin; we are born imperfect and have to atone. It was not the abolition of schools that concerned him but the recognition that a wider and more diverse landscape was needed. He was prophetic in seeing alternatives in skills-centres, educational credits and the ‘possible use of technology to create institutions which serve personal, creative and autonomous interaction’.

Technology and education

Well before the age of the internet he foresaw the power of technology in education and knowledge. He saw an alternative to schooling through a network or service which gave each person the same opportunity to share his/her concern with others, motivated by the same concern. His core idea was that education for all means education by all. He sees us providing the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all education through the teacher. In this sense, the inverse of school is possible, recommending four types of educational resource:

1. Reference services to Educational Objects

2. Skill exchanges

3. Peer-matching

4. Reference services to Educators-at-large

One could argue that this is starting to happen with the advent of technology in learning, through search, free content in Wikipedia, Open Educational Resources and social media. Many other formal and informal learning networks have arisen online.

University

His critique of the University system is as fierce as that of schools. He sees them as having betrayed their original values, becoming the ‘final stage of the most all-encompassing initiation rite the world has ever seen’. In practice, it is here that students redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This, along with unlimited opportunities for legitimised waste and the rising costs makes them ripe for reform. University, he claims, creates skills shortages by institutionalising professions such as nursing and teaching.

Once exposed to intense ‘schooling’ it is very difficult to free oneself from school and the expectations it sets. He is also right in noticing that this re-emergence of values comes through in educational reform, where he saw that the solution to bad schooling is always more schooling. He also resists the idea of turning our entire culture into a school through ‘lifelong learning’ and attacks the ‘teacher-as-therapist’ culture. He is opposed to pushing out the walls of the classroom until they envelop everything we do in our lives.

Influence

Although disparaged by many educators and academics, unsurprisingly, as he attacks their schooling institutions and outlook, Illich remains a huge influence on educational thought. His critique of schools is regarded as extreme but intellectually profound and related to the corrupt influence of institutionalisation, rather than political ideology or oppression. Above all, his ideas for alternatives, such as ‘learning webs’, were prescient.

Bibliography

Illich, Ivan (1973a) Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Illich, Ivan (1973b) Celebration of Awareness. A call for institutional revolution, Harmondsworth Penguin.

Illich, Ivan (1975a) Tools for Conviviality, London: Fontana.

Illich, Ivan (1976) After Deschooling, What?, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.

Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Gramsci (1891-1937) – hegemony, intellectuals and informal learning

Jailed by Mussolini, Gramsci wrote 32 notebooks, written over 11 years in prison but wasn’t published in English until the 1970s. If you hear the word ‘hegemony’ it’s likely to have come from someone who has read, or just as likely not read but unknowingly quoting, Gramsci.

As a Marxist his focus was on cultural and ideological forces in society. Informal education along with defined roles for intellectuals and redefining schools, are all main themes for Gramsci as he took Marxism and updated its theories in the light of 20^th century evidence. The physical conflict between the classes became a mental conflict, where ideas were the weapons, perpetuated through institutions, especially educational institutions. He was to have a great influence on radical educational theorists such as Freire and Illich.

Hegemony

Traditional Marxism saw class control and conflict as one of domination and coercion. Gramsci saw that this was not subtle enough to explain the status quo and thought that values, morals and social institutions kept class structures in place. The common consciousness unwittingly adopts these beliefs and preserves inequalities and domination. Two forces operate here; first coercive institutions such as the armed services, police, government and legislature, second non-coercive institutions such as schools, churches, trade unions, social clubs and the family. Interestingly schools straddled both categories with their coercive curriculum, standards, qualifications and compulsion but also non-coercively through informal education, the hidden curriculum.

Schools

Power for the ruling classes, comes not from force but ideological manipulation and control. Schools and education play a major role in perpetuating this hegemony, reinforcing the social norms of dominance and obedience. The fact that different classes tend to have different schools is evidence that this dynamic was operative. Schools, he thought, should give all pupils a common grounding, free from social differences and we should be wary of vocational schools for the poor and academic schools for the rich. Everyone should have a good, grounded education, a comprehensive education. In many ways the UKs comprehensive system had its roots in Gramsci. Like Dewey and many others he saw learning as being active through activities. However, he was no Rousseau-like romantic. Children, he recognised, did not take naturally to learning.

Intellectuals

Intellectuals, for example academics, are often seen as being above and apart from the ruling classes but Gramsci doubted this and saw some as perpetuating the system. Indeed, some intellectuals are the product of this class consciousness and their role is precisely the continuation of the current system. His solution was to encourage intellectuals from other class backgrounds to participate in political activity. This opened the door for a more enlightened view of education and change, counter to the brutality of anti-intellectualism of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Informal learning

Schools need to produce well-rounded participants in society, but also intellectuals who would act as a brake on the power of the ruling classes to exercise their power through education. The educated individual could act critically to change society and play a significant role in society. Education was therefore a powerful source of ideas and action in a society with the capability of changing society for the better. This was a powerful force in 20^th century socialist thinking, where intellectuals, and worker’s education, were regarded as being at the vanguard of working class consciousness and struggle.

Technology and informal learning

Many still see informal, adult education as great force for good, perhaps stripped of its Marxist clothes. The rise of technology may be moving us in this direction with almost universal access to online knowledge through Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and a plethora of other sources. A different breed of intellectuals may arise, free from the control of institutional academia. We may even see much learning break free, in the way Gramsci imagined, from the control of formal, coercive curriculum, assessment, qualifications and institutions.

Conclusion

Gramsci related Marxism directly to the institutions of education and saw them as playing a key role in the ideological revolution. The role of intellectuals, not merely academic, in changing society, was also recognised. Many would argue that this sort of academic Marxism had a deleterious effect on schooling, politicising education and schools. Others would still argue that an egalitarian educational system is far from realisation and that Gramsci’s ideas still have huge currency in modern debates on education and schooling. As with so much of this debate, the danger lies in strong ideological positions being taken at the expense of innovative practice and realism.

Bibliography

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Boggs, C. (1976) Gramsci’s Marxism. London: Pluto Press.

Entwistle, H. (1979). Antonio Gramsci: Conservative schooling for radical politics. London: Routledge.

Carmel Borg et al (2003) Gramsci & Education  Rowman & Littlefield.

Jones S. LouisGramsci, Routledge Critical Thinkers, Routledge.

7 ways women are ignored in education from Jane Roland Martin

Jane Roland Martin is a remarkable woman as she widened up educational theory in line with those such as Dewey and Illich. yet her real contribution is in the many issues around women in education. Her views are inclusive but above all expansive.
1. Women ignored

She saw the role of women as a largely unexamined issue in education. Women had for centuries been excluded from access to education but even recently, ignored in teaching, schooling, higher education.

2, New sources

As women have been denied access to education, excluded from education, educational institutions and the vehicles of educational theorising, she recommends that we must look to wider sources for the views, in magazines, pamphlets, more general literature and the wider media landscape.

3. The educational ideal ignores women

The definition of education itself, Martin claims, has neglected women. Work by women and work about women are often ignored, with the role of women in education hugely under researched and understood. This, she thinks, distorts and misrepresents reality. The very idea of an educated person or educational ideal must take women into account. 

4. Spectator knowledge

Martin excavated, in an anthropological manner, hidden assumptions and problems within education, especially the curriculum of fixed cultural subjects and knowledge, as well as male cognitive perspectives, at the expense of other disciplines and real-world knowledge and skills. She saw curricula and institutions, that focus largely on ‘spectator’ knowledge, as promoting a one-sided view of education. In particular she came to focus on gender through feminism.

5. Education to include domestic context

For Martin, the school as home should be far more relevant to life outside of school, especially the domestic environment of the home. It needs to draw back from a curriculum that focuses largely on ‘spectator’ knowledge. The role of mothering, issues around the ghettoisation of women on professions such as teaching and nursing, as well as the insensitivity to women’s often difficult role at work and at home, led her to a radical stance on taking action across a broad front to rebalance the educational system, in response to this analysis. 

6. Multiple Educational Agency

Yet the education debate so often focuses solely on schools and schooling. Dewey and many others have downplayed the role of school in the development of young people. For Martin this narrow and obsessive emphasis on schools and schooling may result in cultural miseducation. Parents, family, community, church, youth groups, sports clubs, the media, internet and other institutions, even the education of animals, have played roles in education long before schools and schooling were common. Martin has an expansive view of learning as a process of Multiple Educational Agency. To focus just on schools, which are notoriously difficult to change, is to ignore the very many other opportunities to educate

7. Learning happens everywhere

Above all she reconceptualises education as something that is all-pervasive, often informal, through many agents in many different contexts. The idea that education is a fundamental aspect of life that lasts for the whole of one's life underpins her entire re-evaluation.

Criticism

Critics have claimed that her work is so general that it is difficult to either object or test. Others claim that her widening education to include, for example animals, is taking the inclusivity idea too far. Others, while agreeing with Martin’s descriptive work, have argued that Martin’s prescriptive recommendations around the reconstitution of education are either impractical, simply reinforce inequalities or replace them with new ones. Her work certainly aroused debate and passions.

Conclusion

Martin may not be regarded as the only or even leading voice of feminism in education but her reputation as a dogged researcher, determined to re-establish historical wrongs and implement future rights is unarguable. The re-evaluation of Plato, Rousseau, James, Wollstonecraft, Montessori, Beecher and Gilman is one contribution. Stimulating feminist and gender debate and research is another. Widening the view of education beyond schooling is another. Above all she reconceptualises education as something that is all-pervasive, often informal, through many agents in many different contexts. This was Martin’s great achievement, simply opening the world of education up to a much wider set of perspectives around gender, women and what it is to educate and be an educated person.

Bibliography

Martin, J. R. (1985). Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Martin, J. R. (1992). The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Martin, J. R. (1994). Changing the Educational Landscape: Philosophy, Women, and Curriculum. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Martin, J. R. (2000). Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women's Hopes and Reforming the Academy. New York: Routledge.

Martin, J. R. (2002). Cultural Miseducation: In Search of a Democratic Solution. New York: Teachers College Press.

Martin, J. R. (2011). Education Reconfigured: Routledge.

Calvin (1509-1564) teachers as preachers, sin and the deficit model of schooling

Education as a religious imperative

Calvin, with Luther, was a hugely influential Protestant reformer who attacked the Catholic Church and worked towards a return to a more basic form of Christianity based on a personal relationship between God the creator and his subjects. It is also important to remember that his intellectual lineage from St Augustine, so predestination, sin and eternal damnation figured large in his theological beliefs. In education, this reformed approach gave new impetus to self-improvement and universal schooling, made possible by the massive rise of printed books.

School as secular salvation

We must know only God and ourselves through scripture. Idolatry and ritual were to be shunned. We are fallen creatures, with the burden of original sin and have to find redemption through Christ. This fight against sin was to shape schooling and education in

Northern Europe and North America for centuries, with its deficit model, matched by righteous schoolmasters who had to drill, beat and moralise leaners into improvement. Discipline, attention and punctuality were to become the virtues of the schoolroom. Illich thought that Calvinism had literally shaped schooling as we know it, with school as the new form of secular salvation.

Universal education

His second influence is on his emphasis one universal education from an early age. Education was part of the Protestant mission and compulsory schooling was to be encouraged for all and so he encouraged the building of schools and free schooling for all, especially the poor. Through reformers like John Knox, schools were formed in every parish and they were to shape the Prussian model under Friedrich Wilhelm I, then the Napoleonic model and much of modern institutional learning, even into North America.

Calvin and print

Literacy was a virtue as it enabled the personal study of scripture direct from the printed word. Luther was another great influence on this policy. As an active promoter of the new publishing industry, he saw our personal relationship with God being truly mediated, not by the church and priests, but through personal reflection. Calvin’s support for the printed word, mostly scripture, came at a time in Europe when the print revolution was exploding and as books were no longer scarce, reading became a major pedagogic force.

Teaching as preaching

Perhaps his most enduring, influence is on preaching, exposition and the repetition as pedagogic techniques. In other words, the traits of the preacher were to become that of the teacher. Regular singing of Psalms, repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, moral assemblies each morning all made their way into schooling, reinforced in the Victorian era when schooling became compulsory and large numbers of children had to be looked after and schooled, as their parents were working in factories. We are still mired in this protestant pedagogy, if not its theological predilictions.

Criticism

It has been argued that the Reformation, and Calvinism in particular, sees education as the rectification of weakness and not the building of strengths. What is produced and exposed is not success but failure, leading to fixed curricula, obsessive testing and a deficit model that interprets education in pathological terms. It can also be argued that many of the institutional behaviours and practices in schools regiment children in a way that as unnatural and unnecessarily restrictive. Morning assemblies, the teacher as transmitter of knowledge , rows of desks, bells on the hour, drill and practice, can be seen as strict Calvinist practices, where students are regarded as sinful beings that have to be saved from ignorance.

Conclusion

Calvin’s influence on education through universal schooling has been immense, as is his influence on attitudes towards education as a deficit model, where the students are seen from the start as a flawed creatures. This led to methods of teaching that are only now being re-examined. In a sense Calvin has been a curse and a blessing, with his emphasis on the virtues of education combined with the vices of, for example, teachers as preachers.

Bibliography

Calvin, J. Institutes for the Christian Religion

Tillich, Paul, (1968) History of Christian Thought, New York: Harper and Row

Reid, W. S. (1972) John Calvin: His Influence on the Western World, Michigan: Zondervan

Graham, W. Fred (1971), The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press

Helm, Paul (2004),John Calvin's Ideas, Oxford

White (1934 - ) What is education for? Autonomy

What is education for? This key question still elicits puzzled looks, ill-formed answers, even platitudes, from students, parents, policy makers and even learning professionals. Few can fully articulate the purpose of education. John White has clear views on the subject that escapes the usual formulations to focus on the idea of autonomy. A product of London’s Institute of Education, he asks what we should do in a world where the old certainties of religion and a job for life are gone. How should we define education in a more liberal, complex, fragmented and technological world?

Autonomy

To avoid the trap of instrumentalism, seeing education as a slave to the state and employment, as well as the woolly thinking around education as a good in itself, White uses a concept that combines the needs of learner but also links directly to the needs of a democratic society. That concept is autonomy.

Autonomy, not reason or any other end, is chosen, as it defines, in terms of the self, what one must learn to be a fully functional adult in a complex world. In this sense it avoids the narrow strictures of an inflexible, over-academic curriculum, but it widens education out to deal with the individual as a rounded functioning being. The learner needs to avoid being the slave to desire but also being a slave to a given authority.

Always wary of unreflective existence, a theme going back to the Greeks, he is keen to encourage a reflective form of autonomy that is in line with our responsibilities to ourselves and others.

Curriculum

In Beyond the National Curriculum he had attacked the narrow, prescriptive definition of a curriculum, based not on evidence but the personal prejudices of politicians, a debate not unfamiliar in our own times. His alternative is an education that promotes rational, freedom of choice. The curriculum therefore needs to foster moral, intellectual, financial and practical autonomy to allow people to lead happy, healthy, lives, form relationships, cook, find jobs and think for themselves. The system is stuck in a mode that allows the people who benefit most, the middle-class, to defend its outmoded values, as it has served them well.

He is critical of current schooling, based as it is on flawed theories of intelligence, and like Illich sees a strong Calvinist tradition as lying at the root of our overly-academic curriculum, along with the political influence of highly selective schools. He is just as critical of the fuzzy thinking behind John Gardener’s ‘multiple intelligences’.

Work

Neither does he shy away from work as an important topic in education. In ‘Education and the End of Work’ he assumes a more fragmented, work environment where too narrow vocational training will leave learners ill-equipped to deal with the future. We must educate for the ability to cope with the changes that the future will bring. This is, in some ways, the weakness of his reliance on autonomy alone. It can break down when it comes to detailed policy and prescription. James Tooley was to pick up on White’s work, again using Rawls Theory of justice in a thought experiment in Reclaiming Education, where he imagines us starting again, to choose an optimal educational system. White and Tooley draw on deeper philosophical though to guide their thinking, a refreshing approach, compared to the shallower prescriptions based on personal experience.

Conclusion

White draws on analytic philosophy to ask a tough question to come up with a sophisticated answer. He succeeds in placing ‘autonomy’ at the heart of educational thinking and planning, and his approach is grounded and useful in that it is not linked to a specific political or cultural outlook. The concept of autonomy can be seen a universal good, linked to the individual, strong enough to define curricula and choices yet flexible enough to cope with a changing future.

Bibliography

White, J. (1973).Towards a compulsory curriculum. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

White, J. (1982).The Aims of Education Restated. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

White, J. (1994).Education and Personal Well-Being in a Secular Universe. London. University of London Institute of education. White, J. (1997).Education and the end of Work. London: Cassell.

White J. A properly rounded academic education  (http://www.philosophy-of-education.org/uploads/papers2011/WhiteJ.pdf)

John Gatto: the best teacher in New York who walked out on 'schooling'

John Taylor Gatto was an award winning teacher who became a fierce critic of contemporary schooling. As New York City ‘Teacher of the Year’ for three consecutive years, he had been a teacher for 30 years, when he suddenly resigned, in 1991, disillusioned with his profession and the education system in the US.

I Quit, I Think

His resignation letter to the Wall Street Journal attacked the curriculum of class and dependency, where children were locked into a pyramidal sorting structure. Confinement, tests, bells, fixed periods, standardization; all forced teachers to play the role of master to the children as disciples. Parents and families, he thought, were deliberately excluded and treated as adverseries, with children robbed of their time and childhood. To be clear, he was a conservative, libertarian who supports home schooling and open source learning, doesn't  believe in state-trained teachers and thinks that the market should be allowed to flourish as the agent of change.

History of US Education

The full title ‘The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling’ is an unflinching history and critique of US schooling. In a somewhat fragmented style, he takes us though the many influences on US education. In particular, however, the Prussian provenance of US schooling is exposed, where the aim was to regiment people into being loyal citizens of the state. Aided by Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report" to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843, the Prussian idea of order, a fixed curriculum and certification was firmly established. He fingers James Bryant Conant and Alexander Inglis for imposing the strict subject divisions, age-grading, ranking by constant testing and other subtler strictures. In the late nineteenth and twentieth century the demands for labour encouraged this warehousing into large schools with standardized process and product. The system, he thinks, has become fossilized and unfit for purpose. In his sights are also religion, behaviourism, Taylorism, business, bureaucracies, centralised control, adjunct staff and administrators in schools and many other supposedly false gods. He identifies 22 agencies; Government agencies, special interest groups and the knowledge industry, who control and distort education to their own ends.

An important hteme is the way capitalism demands a malleable workforce.

Critique of schooling

In 'Dumbing Us Down' he sees both teachers and children are infantilized by the rigid structures of schools and schooling, “virtual factories of childishness” where boredom is the norm. Teachers have to teach everything out of context and age segregation is applied in a way that contradicts the normal mix of ages outside of school. School, for Gatto, is a sorting mechanism that creates a culture of acceptance, indifference and emotional dependency. You are taught to accept your place in life, your class and fixed destiny, you have no privacy, no place to hide. By being drilled, you become indifferent to many subjects and mentally depended on teachers. Additionally, the curriculum and rules confuse children, who never really grasp the crazy sequence  of subjects and knowledge, which they learn but quickly forget. Above all, it robs them of their free time. The solution to problems is often more pre-school, more homework, more schooling. The consequence of all this is that children become indifferent to the adult world and its achievements and wonders. Curiosity is crushed, the future ignored and compassion supressed as the weak are preyed upon. No one , he things, escapes from school with their humanity intact, students, teachers or parents.

In an unorthodox fashion, he recommends plenty of solitude for children so that they can learn to live with themselves and conduct internal dialogue and not become addicted to company, the crowd and peer groups, which schools promote. This is far from the current social contructivist orthodoxy.

Recommendations

Education is not the same as schooling, and as a libertarian, he recommends less not more schooling and homeschooling but not in the sense of simply doing that to pass the standardized tests. He wants young people to have more contact with the adult world outside of school, do something they excel at, be challenged, do community work, learn to be autonomous learners, encouraged to use their imagination, problem solve, deal with set-backs. He makes an interesting distinction between communities and networks, which really masquerade as communities.

Criticism

His writing can often seem polemical, even hyperbolic, yet he marshals an astonishing amount of evidence and testimonies for his positions, as well his own considerable, personal experience. Another common criticism is that he he high on criticism, low on solutions. His libertarian alternatives have been attacked as unworkable or worse, putting large numbers of disadvantaged children at further disadvantage. To be fair, a libertarian, by definition, does not posit full and fixed systematic solutions. Nevertheless, in practice, many aspects of learning and education seem to need the organization and structures that Gatto wants to dismantle.

Conclusion

Immersed in teaching and schooling, Gatto’s critiques have more power because of his background as an outstanding teacher in disadvantaged schools. His critique of compulsory schooling is at times convincing, at times a diatribe. In line with Illich, and to a degree with Ken Robinson, he forces teachers, parents and educationalists to face up to some disturbing aspects of schools and schooling. What he perhaps fails to do it solve the problems.

Bibliography

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992).

The Exhausted School (1993).

A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling (2000)

The Underground History of American Education (2001)

'Against School' (2003)

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008)