Deschooling

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Deschooling (German about Entschulen ) is a term critical educators and opponents of state schools and referred to as the context requires different things. The term was coined by Ivan Illich in his 1971 book Deschooling Society . He is also the best-known representative of deschooling in Germany.

history

Paul Goodman had criticized the established school system even before Illich . In 1947 he asked himself the question of the relationship between man and the modern, urban, industrial environment that surrounds him.

In his 1960 book, Growing Up Absurd , he argues that young people fail to grow up because they live in a society that is not suitable for growing up in it. In his book Compulsory Miseducation , published in 1962, he asks the question: "Since school attendance is compulsory, doesn't the school have to repeatedly prove that it is useful?"

In the course of the 1968 movement , the existing school system was discussed in the USA, but also in Germany and in many other countries. The best-known three American de-schooling authors were John Caldwell Holt , Everett Reimer, and Ivan Illich.

More of a school reformer than a de-schooler, John Caldwell Holt published How Children Fail (1964), How Children Learn (1967) and The Underachieving School, and What Do I Do Monday? (1970). He looked primarily at the school system from the student's perspective: “How do students really learn?” He observed what was happening in the classrooms and summarized it as follows: “What happens in the classroom is not what the teachers do think."

Everett Reimer and Ivan Illich were more radical in their statements. The title of Everett Reimer makes this clear, for example: Abolish school! Liberation from the learning machine (Original title School is Dead: Alternatives in Education. An Indictment of the System and a Strategy of Revolution , 1971). The English subtitle already indicates the closeness to the “revolutionary” student unrest of 1967/1968 and the 68 movement.

Illich worked with Reimer in Mexico Cuernavaca in Centro Intercultural de Documentación  together (CIDOC). At that time, 350 students studied and taught at this institute. Today Ivan Illich is better known for his books on health and medicine. Before his engagement as a "Deschooler" he was a priest in New York.

In Germany, Jürgen Zimmer and Hartmut von Hentig are the best known “Deschoolers”. Hartmut von Hentig does not plead for the abolition of the school, but for a radical reform. Building on these authors, Eugen Füner argues for a “completely” different educational concept. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu ( The Illusion of Equal Opportunities , Homo academicus and others) criticized the school system in a similar way.

The word deschooling is also used by unschoolers to describe the process whereby unschoolers (parents and children) turn away from school-based thinking.

Criticism of the established school system

Ian Lister summarizes the arguments of the "Deschoolers" in an article. He claims that the “Deschoolers” do not have “theories of knowledge” as a starting point, but rather start from the problem - the school as an institution . The "Deschoolers" are not humanists - " holiday didactics " ( Hilbert Meyer ) - who have beautiful educational goals and want to bring them to humanity with the help of a theory through the school , but they start from the inadequacy of the school and then consider what to do.

In principle, the “Deschoolers” want to break the school's monopoly on imparting knowledge and on awarding titles and authorizations. Indirectly, the “Deschoolers” criticize the system that surrounds the school, capitalism .

Eugen Füner, however, analyzes the basic structure of the school as it has existed since Comenius . From the contradiction between this structure and the requirements of a modern, democratic, adaptable society, he concludes that the school has outlived itself.

According to the "Deschooler", the school has the following functions:

  • Administrative charge ( custodial care )
  • social selection ( social role selection )
  • Instruction ( indoctrination )
  • Education and learning ( education / learning )

Your definition of school is:

"We define schools as institutions which require full-time attendance of specific age groups in teacher-supervised classrooms for the study of graded curricula."

"We define schools as institutions that require certain age groups to be present full-time in teacher-supervised classrooms to study class-level curricula."

The following are some of the 31 criticisms the Deschooler made in Ian Lister's article:

  • More schools don't necessarily mean more education.
  • School prevents learning instead of promoting it. Schools are unworldly and do not make the world tangible. They deprive the underprivileged of the ability to control and shape their own learning.
  • Schools fail to teach what they claim to teach.
  • The school's mistakes are individualized and thus personalized; the fault lies in the school system.
  • When the school fails, it enlarges.
  • School is a modern idea. It has existed in its current form since the 18th and 19th centuries. Perhaps school is just an appearance in history and disappears again in the future when conditions change.
  • The school is a political actor. It is used explicitly by the written curriculum and implicitly by the “hidden curriculum” to educate politically - in each case in the sense of who is in power in the state, the Third Reich often serves as an example . In addition, the elites are raised to "lead" while the majority are raised to be led.
  • The school acts as a teacher for economics . The great achievement of the 19th century has been to prepare people to endure the suffering of hard, repetitive work for the rest of their lives. The school teaches punctuality , obedience , hard work , ... (see: Protestant ethics )
  • The teachers are conservative .
  • The childhood is a new creation.
  • " School age " is a crazy concept.
  • Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich compared schools , prisons , hospitals , psychiatric hospitals , barracks and the church . Each of these institutions has an overseer, mediator and participation is compulsory. In every institution there is a difference between what they officially claim to be doing and what the employees do on a daily basis.
What puts the school in such a vulnerable position? School picks. School reports are treated like the sacrament . The school offers life after school - but depending on the “goodness” of the diploma. But even a degree leads to college unemployment today . The school's promises are false. (See also the term total institution coined by Erving Goffmann .)
  • It is an illusion to believe that what you have learned is a result of learning in school. James Herdton writes: "Nobody learns anything in school, but middle-class children learn enough elsewhere and then pretend that school taught them something."
  • School pretends to teach how to learn how to deal with people ( tolerance ) - but according to Ivan Illich, schools mainly teach the secret curriculum (the hidden curriculum ). Hilbert Meyer understands hidden curriculum as follows: “It is about practicing hierarchical thinking, performance competition and compliance with norms .” In this context, Ivan Illich compares today's school system with the Chinese civil service examination system . This was stable for centuries. Here, knowledge is understood as an exchange value and not for the participation of individuals in its culture - knowledge as use value .
  • Certificates are perceived like a passport and a credit card.
  • Schools or schooling around the world have not succeeded in eliminating the great inequalities between rich and poor.

Alternatives

The Deschoolers strive for the ideal of a world freed from domination , instrumental action, economic rationality and alienation . To achieve this, they strive for an educated, enlightened , but de-schooled society.

The Deschoolers are not satisfied with just criticizing the existing school system, they also offer alternatives. In the following, only Ivan Illich will be considered in more detail, who worked with Everett Reimer and thus hardly differed from him.

According to Ivan Illich, a good educational system has three aspirations:

  • Everyone has free access to educational institutions at any age.
  • Everyone can teach.
  • Freedom of expression and discussion are made possible.

Ivan Illich believed that four channels ( learning exchanges ) can contain all resources for real learning:

  • Things, information
  • People as a model for skills and values
  • Peers, criticism
  • Older

"The child grows up in a world of things, surrounded by people who serve as models for skills and values. He find peers who challenge him to argue, to compete, to cooperate, and to understand; and, if the child is lucky, he is exposed to confrontation or criticism by an experienced elder who really cares. "

“The child grows up in a world of things, surrounded by people who serve as examples of skills and values. It finds companions who challenge it to reasoning, competition, cooperation, and understanding; and, if the child is lucky, they are exposed to confrontation and criticism from elders to whom it really means something. "

- Ivan Illich : The Deschooling of Society. P. 107.

These are four different ways that allow anyone to have access to all sorts of educational resources that, in turn, allow them to define and achieve their goals.

This is to be achieved through an education or communication network. It can look like this.

  1. A reference service for visual objects that facilitates access to things that are needed for formal education, i.e. libraries, laboratories, event rooms with appropriate media (blackboard, video, PC), etc. is offered.
  2. A skills exchange list, which allows people to enter their skills in a list, is made possible. This list must also include the condition under which the persons are willing to be available as a model for others and the addresses at which they can be reached.
  3. A communication network that allows people to describe the learning activity they want to come into contact with (like-minded meetings) is established.
  4. A reference service for “ educators at large ”, listed with address, self-description of experts, laypeople, journalists , etc. with the conditions under which they offer their service, will be announced.

This is to be financed either by a budget of a community, or the community gives some members money so that they can organize the network of learning activities. Elsewhere, Ivan Illich speaks of a kind of “bank” where you get something “credited” if you give up something of your skills, or something is deducted when you learn skills from others.

literature

German-language literature

English-language literature

  • Paul Goodman: Growing up absurd. Problems of Youth in the Organized System (= Vintage Books. V, 32). Vintage Books (Random House), New York NY 1960 (In German: Growing up in contradiction. On the alienation of youth in the administered world. 2nd edition. Verlag Darmstädter Blätter Schwarz, Darmstadt 1972, ISBN 3-87139-010-0 ).
  • Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society (= World Perspectives. Volume 44, ZDB -ID 2716557-7 ). Harper and Row, New York NY 1971.
  • Ivan Illich: The Breakdown of School: A Problem or a Sympton? In: Interchange. Volume 2, No. 4, 1971, pp. 1-10, ISSN  0826-4805 , doi: 10.1007 / BF02287078 .
  • Ivan Illich: The Deschooling of Society. In: Bruce Rusk (Ed.): Alternatives in Education. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Fifth Anniversary Lectures. General Pub. Co., Toronto 1971, ISBN 0-7736-1008-1 .
  • Ian Lister: The challenge of Deschooling. In: Ian Lister (Ed.): Deschooling. A reader. Cambridge University Press, London a. a. 1974, ISBN 0-521-09845-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ian Lister: The challenge of Deschooling. In: Ian Lister (Ed.): Deschooling. A reader. London u. a. 1974, p. 2.
  2. ↑ Hartmut von Hentig: Cuernavaca or alternatives to school? Stuttgart u. a. 1972, p. 14.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Ivan Illich: The Deschooling of Society. In: Bruce Rusk (Ed.): Alternatives in Education. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Fifth Anniversary Lectures. Toronto 1971.
  4. ↑ Everett Reimer: Get rid of school! Liberation from the learning machine (= rororo non-fiction book 6795). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1972, pp. 84-100.