Ivan Illich’s book (1971), Deschooling Society (hereafter DS), was published 40 years ago. Of all the books purportedly written on radical educational alternatives that came out in 1960s and 1970s, Illich’s book remains perhaps the most discussed, and it still continues to inspire educational experiments in much of the Third World. But a large part of the discussion on Illich has focused on the details of the proposal outlined in DS, and seems to have missed the point that the book’s focus was more on ‘society’ rather than on only ‘deschooling’. More often than not, Illich’s work, especially DS, is seen as being reflective of a broader countercultural turn towards the end of the 1960s in the United States (Latta, 1989), and is generally located within a larger critique of schooling (Foster, 1971; Keesbury, 1981). Although Illich’s voice was a significant one in this countercultural turn, one needs to see his work beyond this. His work is seen as belonging to a broader group of ‘radical liberals’ such as Dewey and Freire (Lichtenstein, 1985, p. 51). It is also seen as being derivative of earlier sociological works by scholars such as

‘Deschooling Society’: The Strange Legacy of Ivan Illich

The author critiques Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, arguing that, despite his forthright vision of the liberating potential of educational technology, Illich fails to understand fully how the e...

Towards a Political Economy of Education: A Radical Critique of Ivan Illich's "De-Schooling Society.".

Introduction: The aim of this paper is to offer a critical evaluation of the role of liberation philosophy in developing communities of inquiry. The article is divided into three sections. In the first, we examine the relationship between liberation philosophy and liberation pedagogy. The second section focuses on a discussion of relationships between liberation pedagogy, communities of inquiry and the teaching of philosophical thinking. Finally, we discuss what we regard as some of the challenges of liberation pedagogy and outline future directions for research and practice. While a number of scholars have offered radical critiques of education and schooling (Latta, 1989), this article considers the work of Paulo Freire as expressed in what is perhaps his best-known book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1996).

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Liberation Philosophy and the Development of Communities of Inquiry: A Critical Evaluation

The present thesis discusses the hidden curriculum in EFL textbooks, focusing primarily on its influence on EFL students. The first part of the thesis provides us with a theoretical background of major research areas connected to the topic of the hidden curriculum, covering the problems of defining the term, as well as its historical background, its present-day importance for both teachers and students, and finally its manifestation in EFL teaching. The second part of the thesis describes the study conducted on four EFL textbooks from four different countries, namely, Croatia, Russia, South Africa and the UK.

Ruth Latta

Papers

The Critics of Schooling