Contents
Introduction
I owe my interest in public education to Everett Reimer. Until
we first met in Puerto Rico in 1958, I had never questioned the
value of extending obligatory schooling to all people. Together
we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is
curtailed by the obligation to attend school. The essays given at
CIDOC and gathered in this book grew out of memoranda which I
submitted to him, and which we discussed during 1970, the
thirteenth year of our dialogue. The last chapter contains my
afterthoughts on a conversation with Erich Fromm on Bachofen's Mutterrecht. Since 1967 Reimer and I have met regularly at the Center for
Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Valentine Borremans, the director of the Center, also joined our
dialogue, and constantly urged me to test our thinking against
the realities of Latin America and Africa. This book reflects her
conviction that the ethos, not just the institutions, of society
ought to be "deschooled." Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It
would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of
alternative institutions built on the style of present schools.
Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the
proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom
or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's
responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will
deliver universal education. The current search for new
educational funnels must be reversed into the search for
their institutional inverse: educational webs which
heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of
his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who
conduct such counterfoil research on education--and also to those
who seek alternatives to other established service industries. On Wednesday mornings, during the spring and summer of 1970, I
submitted the various parts of this book to the participants in
our CIDOC programs in Cuernavaca. Dozens of them made suggestions
or provided criticisms. Many will recognize their ideas in these
pages, especially Paulo Freire, Peter Berger, and JosŽ Maria
Bulnes, as well as Joseph Fitzpatrick, John Holt, Angel Quintero,
Layman Allen, Fred Goodman, Gerhard Ladner, Didier Piveteau, Joel
Spring, Augusto Salazar Bondy, and Dennis Sullivan. Among my
critics, Paul Goodman most radically obliged me to revise my
thinking. Robert Silvers provided me with brilliant editorial
assistance on Chapters 1, 3, and 6, which have appeared in
The New York Review of Books. Reimer and I have decided to publish separate views of our
joint research. He is working on a comprehensive and documented
exposition, which will be subjected to several months of further
critical appraisal and be published late in 1971 by
Doubleday & Company. Dennis Sullivan, who acted as secretary
at the meetings between Reimer and myself, is preparing a book
for publication in the spring of 1972 which will place my
argument in the context of current debate about public schooling
in the United States. I offer this volume of essays now in the
hope that it will provoke additional critical contributions to
the sessions of a seminar on "Alternatives in
Education" planned at CIDOC in Cuernavaca for 1972 and
1973. I intend to discuss some perplexing issues which are raised
once we embrace the hypothesis that society can be deschooled; to
search for criteria which may help us distinguish institutions
which merit development because they support learning in a
deschooled milieu; and to clarify those personal goals which
would foster the advent of an Age of Leisure (schole) as
opposed to an economy dominated by service industries. IVAN ILLICH CIDOC November, 1970
Cuernavaca, Mexico