Every once in a while I like to pick up a copy of Ivan Illich his book ‘Deschooling Society’, first published in 1970. as someone who advocates learning outside the educational system, there is a lots of inspiration to be found in this seminal work (if you ignore the 1970s ‘engaged’ lingo). If you don’t know this book, I recommend you have a look at it. Here is a quote I’d like to share with you that and I like:
‘A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning as a result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only in so far as the school, and a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives. M Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Normal children learn their first language casualty, although faster if their parents pay attention to them. Most people who learn a second Lang which well do so as a result of all circumstances and not all sequential teaching. They go to live with their grandparents, they travel, or they fall in love with a foreigner. Fluency in reading is also more often than not a result of such extracurricular activities. Most people who read widely, and with pleasure, merely believe that have learned to do so in school; when challenged, they easily discard this illusion’ (p. 20).
Here’s another one: ‘the very existence of obligatory schools divides any society into two realms: some time spans and processes and treatments and professions are ‘academic’ or ‘pedagogic’, and others are not. The power of school thus to divide social reality has no boundaries: education becomes unworldly and the world becomes non-educational.’ (p.31)
Tags: informal learning, out-of-class, quotes