| Ivan Illich |
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| 1926 births | |
| 2002 deaths | |
| alternative education | |
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Ivan Illich ( Vienna , September 4 , 1926 - Bremen , December 2 , 2002 ), Polymath , Polemicist . Author of an informal series of polemical critiques of the institutions of 'modern' culture, he addressed issues from education to medicine to work to energy use and economic development to gender. His work rose to immense popularity in the 1970's, yet today is not often found in the mainstream academic canon. PERSONAL LIFE Born in Vienna to a family of Jewish - Catholic Croatian roots, whence they were forced to flee in 1941, he studied Histology and Crystallography at Florence University. From 1932 to 1946 he studied Theology and Philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the Vatican . He wrote a dissertation with a focus on historian, Arnold Toynbee. This field is one to which he describes himself returning to in his latter career. In the 1950's he asked to be assigned as a parish priest in New York City . In 1956 he was appointed vice-rector of the Catholic University Of Puerto Rico . Illich at this time met Everett Reimer, and the two began to analyze their own function as "educational" leaders. In 1961 Illich founded the Centro Intercultural De Documentación (CIDOC) at Cuernavaca in Mexico , ostensibly a research centre offering language courses to missionaries from North America. However, his intent was to counterfoil the Vatican's participation in the "modern development" of the so-called Third World. Illich believed that the Third World, in its under-development, should be viewed with envy. He looked askance at the liberal pity or conservative imperiousness which motivated the global rising tide of industrial development. He viewed such emmisaries as a form of industrial hegemony, and as such, an act of "war on subsistence". He sought to teach "missionaries" dispatched by the Church to rather identify themselves as tourists and guests of the host country. After 10 years, the analytic and critical stance of CIDOC on the institutional actions of the Church began to bring the institution into conflict with the Vatican. He was called to Rome to be questioned. In 1976, Illich, apparently concerned by the influx of formal academics and possible side-effects of its own 'institutionalization', shut the alternative center down, with the consent of its members. Several members subsequently continued language schools in Cuernavaca, some of which still exist. Illich himself resigned as a priest in the late 1960s. From the 1980s, Ivan Illich traveled extensively, mainly splitting his time between the United States , Mexico , and Germany . He held an appointment as Visiting Professor of Philosophy and of Science, Technology, and Society at Penn State , and also taught at the University Of Bremen . During his later years, he suffered from a cancerous growth on his face that, in accordance with his critique of professionalized medicine, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to treat with traditional methods. He regularly smoked opium to deal with the pain caused by this tumor. At an early stage, he consulted a doctor about having the tumor removed, but there was too great a chance of losing his ability to speak, he was told, so he lived with the tumor as best he could. "My mortality," he called it. PHILOSOPHY ''DESCHOOLING SOCIETY'' His most celebrated work remains '' Deschooling Society '' (1971), a critical discourse on education as practised in 'modern' economies. Full of detail on then current programmes and concerns, the book can seem dated, but its core assertions and propositions remain as radical today as they were at the time. Giving real-world examples of the ineffectual nature of institutionalised education, Illich posited self-directed education, supported by intentional social relations, in fluid, informal arrangements: :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. {Link without Title} The last sentence makes clear what the title suggests - that the institutionalisation of education is considered to tend towards the institutionalisation of society, and conversely that ideas for de-institutionalising education may be a starting point for a de-institutionalised society. And this is where the true radicalism of the ideas becomes clear. As a breadth of erudition, Illich always considers his insights in the widest possible terms. The book is more than a critique - it contains positive suggestions for a reinvention of learning throughout society and throughout every individual lifetime. Of particular relevance here is his call (from a 1971 perspective) for the use of advanced technology to support "learning webs". Many characteristics of these as described relate strongly to the nature and use of the WWW in general, and strongly to the workings and ideals of Wikipedia . QUOTATIONS
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