Deschooling Society

[Bill Ryan]

Ivan Illich (1926—2002) was a deep and profound social thinker. He spoke English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Croatian, Portuguese, Hindi, and also learned Ancient Greek and Latin.

In 1971, decades ahead of his time, he wrote Deschooling Society (linked below), which I devoured when aged 20, reading it several times. It had a lasting effect on my own thinking.

https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Iva...%20Society.pdf



What Illich presented and argued is more relevant now than ever before.

Back in the Middle Ages, organized formal education was important, the only way for any young people, if they had the chance, to learn about the wider world and its languages, culture, and history.

But it gradually morphed into a kind of mandatory control system, a means of socializing impressionable but bright young people into conformity.

I was a math teacher for a single year when I was 23, in what was Britain's most expensive and prestigious private school. I quickly realized that all I was doing was coaching the kids into somehow passing their math exams so that (in most cases) they could give up the subject as soon as possible.

I knew, of course, that math was important for future engineers and scientists. But I was sure there had to be a better way.

But the issue has become far worse, the problems more deeply ingrained in 21st century society's deep malfunction. Nowadays, especially in America, one can easily find countless posts and short videos, from despairing teachers explaining that the kids cannot read and have extremely short attention spans, almost impossible to teach or control in any classroom.

I'm not familiar with what's happening in classrooms in Russia or China. But I suspect that the issues are similar in the UK and EU (or are rapidly becoming so). With the escalating epidemic of IQ-lowering, mind-numbing social media and meaningless but addictive AI noise, this problem — especially in the US (which itself is a broken, failing society) — things are only going to get worse.

One of many places where this all ends up can be seen in the videos I referenced 10 days ago in this Clown World post, showing how a whole bunch of bona fide college students couldn't name three countries in the world, know what direction 'vertical' was, or do the most super-simple mental arithmetic.

Parents have a lot to answer for, of course. Giving a 4-year old an iPad to shut them up and keep them busy is a surefire recipe for a stunted, addicted kid with a lowered IQ, a future problem for any teacher. (And especially if they're multiply-vaxxed and fed junk food every day — but that's a different, compounding issue.)

Home schooling in a genuinely healthy and enlightened family environment has to be one solution. I've written elsewhere how my young friend Pema has never spent a single day in school.

Yet at age 12 she can speak 4 languages, do enough math to calculate in her head everything she needs to know in international trail running races, and can easily name and place on a world map a whole bunch more countries than it seems many American college students can. And she already know more about true health and nutrition than (I dare to say) most qualified mainstream doctors.

But Pema, alas, is an extreme rarity, a multiply-blessed child whose kind may be near to extinction. There are very, very few like her. She's a gleaming example of what all children have the potential to be, but only 1 in 10,000 in the western world is ever allowed the chance.

Most who have been reading my posts over the years will know that I'm basically an optimist, to the extent that I ever feel I can be. But I do confess that this is fading fast. I'm increasingly feeling, with little exaggeration, that the human race is pretty much cooked and that its deterioration in every measurable metric may be becoming near-irreversible.

This is a huge topic, already addressed in different ways on many Avalon threads. But the need to Deschool Society — tackling the profound failure of and deep further damage caused by 'formal education' — is another aspect to this.

How a transition like that can ever be made, though, is something I just can't see. Ivan Illich, who foresaw much of this 54 years ago, would be turning in his grave.

[Ewan]

I think I was in my mid 30's when I first read his book and it was eye-opening and mind expanding.

Another author that wrote passionately on much the same subject and had been previously named New York State Teacher of the year authored a book titled "Dumbing us Down"

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

John Taylor Gatto

A highly praised bestseller for over a decade, Dumbing Us Down is a radical treatise on public education that concludes that compulsory government schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in a machine. This Special Collector's Hardcover Edition celebrates 100,000 copies of the book in print, and the book's on-going importance and popularity. John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. A much-sought after speaker on education throughout North America, his other books include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000).

In no way intended to detract from the importance of OP's offer of Ivan Illich , but consider this offering a perhaps more ground floor entry point.

[Bruce G Charlton]

By my understanding, there is a difference between schooling when Illich was writing, and now.

c50 years ago - education was overall system-functional, and directed at fitting people for pre-prepared social niches.

But now, education has no coherent understanding of its functionality; and many of its qualities are actually both system-destructive and self-destructive. I mean, education now is much clearer about what it is against, that what it is positively trying to do.

Indeed, education has no stable and coherent understanding of its positive goals, because neither does Western society - which is (due to the prevalent mainstream, atheistic, materialism) utterly lacking in positive values.

*

In sum: our problem of education cannot be fixed in the context of civilizational collapse.

This seems inevitable because double-negation values - i.e. being opposed to something bad - do not and cannot function as positive values or goals.


I am not optimistic, indeed I would predict that Western civilization will (almost) inevitably collapse, and this is substantially self-willed - because our civilization does not value itself, for the good reason that there is no good reason to value itself (as it is).

I suspect that when the West falls it will bring down almost everybody else - partly by global economic collapse and loss of essential resources and expertise, partly from vengeful spitefulness.

The reason is that the West has rejected Christianity - partly because it was very defective presented as a mandatory package linked to specific churches. But partly from sheer shallowness and bad choices. The vast spiritual and motivational vacuum has not been filled; and indeed there is widespread denial of the necessity - people seek "answers" in more distraction, more pleasure, more convenience, less suffering...

The West partly-tries and always-fails to motivate its own survival on the basis of continually changing ethics and values - increasingly dictated by top-down totalitarian propaganda; and manufactured from vague and unfounded assertions (rooted in little more than manipulated emotionality); that oscillate between selfish hedonism and altruistic utilitarianism.


I usually describe myself as pessimistic and hopeful - hopeful because my ultimate hopes are spiritual, assured, and lie beyond this world!

Pessimistic about this-world, hopeful about the next - and this hope is indomitable (so long as I continue to want it), so that the expectation of "light" (to some extent) shines back to illuminate this mortal life - (I hope...) at least sufficiently to keep me trying to learn-spiritually from the continued experiences this-life brings.

[Isserley]

Ivan Ilić was a philosopher of Croatian and Jewish origin, a Catholic priest, and a critic of the institutions of modern Western culture and their influence on education, medicine, work, energy use, and economic development.
He was even called to account by the Vatican for his views. He then requested secularization and ceased to perform priestly duties. I appreciate his work and he was certainly ahead of his time, but in my humble opinion the problem is not in education/schools but in the excessive use of digital media and social networks.
At the time Ilić wrote, that wasn't even on the horizon.

There is another important book on the subject of societal decay, worth mentioning here, which I recently came across - Manfred Spitzer: Digital dementia: What We and Our Children are Doing to our Minds 2012.

Since the beginning, Spitzer makes it clear that he is prejudiced against the digital media (e.g. he uses sentences like “Compared to the real world, there is more lying and cheating in the internet environment and this in turn affects our own behavior” (p. 70) or “If you want your child’s school results to get worse, buy him (or her) a video game console.” (p. 184). Nevertheless, his prejudice is based on long-term interest in the issue. Arguments such as “Digital media are causing the decline of education among young people” (p. 200) and “at a closer inspection, repeated praising of the digital skills of the young generation vanishes into smoke” (p. 193–194) extend throughout the book. The book is dominated by a warning message: “those who spent a lot of time using audiovisual media in early childhood have already affected the brain development, especially the normal development of speech” (p. 269)
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...Brno_Host_2014

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I suppose this should go here. True story, happened a couple of days ago.

I walked into my local Chinese to order a takeaway. The kid at the till took my order, just two items that added up to £11.20. He was rather slow in adding these two amounts together, because the computerised till was apparently on the fritz; it seemed for the time being that all transactions were being done manually. I'd seen from the customer who went before me that the card reader was still working. But me, I was paying in cash. When I handed him fifteen pounds -- a ten-pound note, and a five -- his face fell immediately. I could tell he was suddenly very much out of his comfort zone. Yes, pal, I still deal in cash. For about fifteen seconds, he shuffled and fiddled as he tried to work out my change.

He kept stopping and starting. He just couldn't get there in his head. Once, he turned to the kitchen door behind him, looking for help. None was coming. By now, two more customers had entered the restaurant. The pressure on him increased. His cheeks flushed red. I stood by, waiting patiently, appalled by his ineptitude but also feeling a little sorry for him. Eventually, he laid a ten-pound note on the counter (!) and started counting out coins. I couldn't believe it. It was time to intervene. With a barely disguised sigh, I told him, "It's three-pounds eighty, mate.' Flustered, he chastened himself, retrieved the tenner, and slowly proceeded to count out my three-pounds eighty in change, one coin at a time.

Strewth.

[rgray222]

This test was administered to 8th-grade children 113 years ago in rural Kentucky, USA. 8th-grade children are generally 13 years old

1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools
Bullitt County is a county located in the north-central portion of the U.S. state of Kentucky.

Bullitt County History Museum

This copy of the Eighth Grade Exam for Bullitt County Schools in 1912 was donated to the museum. We thought you might like to see what the test looked like more than a hundred years ago. Obviously it tested some things that were more relevant at that time than now, and it should not be used to compare student knowledge then and now.

Note that there are several typesetting mistakes on the test including a mistake in the spelling list. The word "eneeavor" should be "endeavor." This version of the exam was probably a master version given out to the schools (note that the spelling words wouldn’t be written on a test.) The museum has been told that the exam was handed out in a scroll form (that is why the paper is long.) The typos would have been corrected simply by contacting the teachers and telling them to mark their copies accordingly, much like would be done today. And there might not be quite as many typos as you think; "Serbia" for example was indeed spelled "Servia" back then.

Bullitt County Schools were mostly one-room schools in those days, scattered around the rural county. Students came together at the county courthouse once or twice a year to take this "Common Exam." It was apparently a big deal. The local newspaper urged students to do well, even urging seventh graders that it was not too early to start preparing. Some scholarships were provided to those who passed to go on to high school, which was also a big deal back then. In those days, high school was sometimes another county away and a rare thing for many farm children to be able to otherwise attend.

And remember to smile a little while reading this exam. It has been great fun, as well as a challenge, to think about the questions, and to come up with answers for 1912 and for today. For example, it has been interesting to see disagreements on even the basics, such as what is a "cord," much less the actual answer to the question, or the much more controversial questions about government and about "who discovered...". Smile. We are all learning from this test.

Our staff has put together possible answers on another page for your amusement.

Source: https://www.bullittcountyhistory.com...am1912ans.html

[shaberon]

Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)
The reason is that the West has rejected Christianity - partly because it was very defective presented as a mandatory package linked to specific churches.

It rejected Orthodoxy, which means, primarily, that the educational system, which is the Bishops, is very different.

Western or Catholic Bishops follow a top-down command -- Ultra- Montane. It's only one thing, one program, that everyone is corralled into.

Orthodox Bishops do not enforce that kind of authority, and work with something perhaps better-educated and socially fit.


That's why the Medici Renaissance was an attempt to revive education in a format we still know as Liberal Arts. On this, verily, even some of the Jesuits played outstanding roles; Athanasius Kircher is who comes to mind. Moreover, this is by way of adding Confucius as a major platform.

I take it this has vanished.

I don't understand it, because, for me, there is nothing that is not educational and never has been. All I know is you start learning things, apply them in your life, and, my takeaway from Liberal Arts it that it never ceases, and you keep continuing with educational things as a basic fact forever, regardless of completing formal training.

It's not possible for "these people" to communicate with me. It's gone. If I start saying words, no meaning will be conveyed, because the recipient has nothing to register it with.

This is very true; we're not talking about a few small details that might be in the rough, or even a little rude. In my experience, I would say it amounts to a disability.


I don't know what it's like to go through school now, although the changes I am aware of sound horrible, and, as far as I know, you'd go to jail for letting kids grow up like we did.

There are a minority of exceptions, there actually is still such a thing as a basically intelligent human being, but I'm not sure they have a chance. For example, I know a brand-new Marine Biologist who is able to be employed to do basically nothing for about sixteen hours a week. Then we can mix in myself and at least two other people I can think of, who have degrees that we are never going to apply to anything. They probably were going for education-as-work-training, I just thought of it as Liberal Arts.

I still see great numbers coming out of high school with no real direction, and I try to avoid finding out how vapid they truly are. It's unavoidable.

[norman]

[Full Audiobook] Deschooling Society - Ivan Illich (1971) - Read by Robin Upton and Tereza Coraggio

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_jrjyemvzZg

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

This one-minute skit sits perfectly in this thread.

https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/1987175780346933298

*

[Bill Ryan]

A very interesting story from earlier this year. This is a shy, high school teenager called Hannah Cairo:



Hannah was brought up in the Bahamas in quite an isolated environment, and was 100% homeschooled. She learned her math online using the Khan Academy interactive website.

She and her family moved to the US when she was 16. Only then, comparing herself with other high school kids, did she realize how way way ahead of everyone else she was at math.

A year later, aged 17 (in February this year) she totally stunned the math world with a major paper that disproved a longstanding conjecture that the world's best mathematicians had been working on for 40 years. Here are some of the headlines:

• At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery
• A 17-Year-Old’s Breakthrough Shakes Up Mathematics
• 17-year-old prodigy rewrites history by shattering 40-year-old math theory
• Mathematicians Startled by 17-Year-Old With Uncanny Abilities: "We were all shocked, absolutely"

The moral of the story? Many homeschooled kids (like my young friend Pema!) may be the brightest, most self-motivated, and most talented of the lot.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Multiple interconnected factors are involved in the widespread deterioration of modern-day academic performance. Here is another that may possibly be partly to blame. Lighting. Something so simple as the quality of light in a classroom. I do remember from my own school days that I disliked fluorescent lighting. Those tubes are too harsh, and they are prone to flickering, which can be very distracting to a student trying to concentrate. But apparently there's more to it than that, and they've known about it for a great many years.

@newstart_2024
In the 1970s they ran an experiment that still blows minds today.

They took four windowless 1st-grade classrooms, swapped the harsh flickering fluorescent lights for full-spectrum bulbs that mimic real daylight… and filmed what happened next.

The difference is shocking: hyperactive, off-the-wall kids suddenly calm down, sit still, and focus like never before. The control classrooms under standard lights? Chaos as usual.

This is real 1970s footage from Dr. John Ott’s groundbreaking work (1976, Sarasota, FL). His time-lapse cameras caught something schools still ignore: artificial light spectrum and flicker can literally rewire developing brains.

Modern science backs it up hard:
- 2023 meta-review of 59 studies: kids are WAY more sensitive to light color & timing than adults

- Blue-enriched “daylight” lighting improves attention, task-switching, reading fluency

- Poor classroom lighting = higher stress, absenteeism, even myopia risk

- Natural/full-spectrum light = up to 25% higher test scores in some studies

We spend billions on curriculum and tech… but most classrooms still run 1970s prison-grade lighting.

Parents, teachers, anyone with kids: watch this clip and tell me this isn’t worth rethinking.

The 70s called — they were onto something huge.

Who else thinks it’s time for a classroom lighting revolution? Drop your thoughts

https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1991999231373230464

[Mike]

This is a vital topic.

Bottom line is this: Kids are being taught to be political activists, to the detriment of nearly everything else. That's the top priority of so called education these days and the #1 problem. It begins in grade school and is reinforced all the way thru high school and college.

It's all very deliberate and planned out, which no one here will be surprised by. This plan is all being rolled out under the very harmless name Social and Emotional Learning (or SEL). It's intended as an all encompassing ethos infecting not just education but literally everything else in the world. To understand fully why education has failed so miserably you have to understand SEL.

Its sounds nice and cozy, like these things often do. But what it does ultimately is turn students into emotional cripples who're obsessed with largely manufactured social grievances.

The U.N. and the WEF are the 2 major entities pushing this agenda, so maybe that's all ya need to know.

James Lindsay is the world's preeminent scholar on this stuff. If you can carve out the time, he breaks it all down here clinically.


Here's the 12 minute bullet point vid for anyone who wants the basics:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PQrMfv_T_lQ

And here is a long'ish lecture for anyone who wants to hear him flesh it out a little more:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=08v5C5DvR14

[onawah]

I've been using Full Spectrum CFL light bulbs for years, both for myself as I suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and for my numerous indoor plants which don't get enough sunlight. They and I both do a lot better with Full Spectrum lighting, which are much safer than LEDs and the regular CFLs.
But I recently saw the following video which doesn't talk about Full Spectrum bulbs, but a new type which the source claims are much healthier than the other types. I guess I will have to try one to see how they feel and I hope these new ones will succeed in replacing the LEDs if they are truly superior.
I had just bought some new FS bulbs just before I saw this, and I noticed that not nearly as many FS bulbs are being sold now as they are being "phased out" apparently.
(Hyperlinks in the following not embedded here)
Dr Martin Moore-Ede | Why Your Health Hinges on the Light You See
degrees of health
16.1K subscribers
Jan 14, 2025
Degrees of Health Podcast

"The light we see is as crucial as the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Former Harvard Medical School professor and 40-year leading expert in circadian clocks and human health, Dr. Moore-Ede speaks on why our health hinges on getting the right sort of light at the right time.

In this episode, he reveals the dangers of modern LED lighting, which often emits bright but unhealthy "junk light." Just as junk food wreaks havoc on our body, junk light disrupts our circadian rhythms, suppresses melatonin, and contributes to chronic diseases.

We cover:
💤 The Health Risks of LED Lighting: disrupts circadian rhythms, suppresses melatonin, and contributes to chronic diseases
💡 Junk Light and Lumens - how modern lighting regulations prioritise energy efficiency over human health
🕒 Circadian Clocks and Longevity: light as essential for disease prevention and healing
👓 Rise of Myopia in Children: indoor living and reduced exposure to natural light are fueling skyrocketing rates of myopia
🌈 Blue light blocking glasses - do you have the right sort?
🛠️ Practical Solutions for Healthier Lighting: simple changes you can make in your home and your life

Backed by decades of evidence, Dr Martin Moore-Ede shares the science behind why we must prioritise light in our health, and how to optimise our exposure for immediate benefits, and a longer, healthier life.

Find Dr Martin:
Book: https://thelightdoctor.com/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Doctor-M...
Website: https://circadianlight.org/
Substack: lightdoctormartinmooreede.substack.com
LinkedIn: / martin-moore-ede-80630a12
Instagram: / circadianlightdoctor
Twitter (X): / drmooreede
YouTube: / @drmartinmoore-ede1539
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?...

Mentioned in this episode:
Health and Light by John Ott https://amzn.to/4jdO36v
SORAA - light bulbs with no blue light https://www.soraa.com/
The Body Electric by Robert Becker and Gary Seldon https://amzn.to/4gRiQET
Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality: results from the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

00:00
The Importance of Light for Health
03:20
Evolutionary Perspective on Light Exposure
10:18
Modern Light Sources and Their Impact
17:22
The Role of Light in Childhood Development
21:54
Link Between Light Exposure and Cancer Rates
26:47
Mechanisms of Light and Cancer Suppression
31:32
The Science of Light and Circadian Rhythms
35:02
Engineering Light for Health Benefits
39:38
Regulatory Challenges in Lighting Standards
43:01
Consumer Education and Demand for Healthy Lighting
45:21
Practical Tips for Light Hygiene
48:33
Historical Perspectives on Light and Health
50:19
Future Research Directions in Light Science
52:04
The Impact of Technology on Light Exposure
56:20
The Importance of Natural Sunlight

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4r09eFmH1aY

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
Multiple interconnected factors are involved in the widespread deterioration of modern-day academic performance. Here is another that may possibly be partly to blame. Lighting. Something so simple as the quality of light in a classroom. I do remember from my own school days that I disliked fluorescent lighting. Those tubes are too harsh, and they are prone to flickering, which can be very distracting to a student trying to concentrate. But apparently there's more to it than that, and they've known about it for a great many years.

@newstart_2024
In the 1970s they ran an experiment that still blows minds today.

They took four windowless 1st-grade classrooms, swapped the harsh flickering fluorescent lights for full-spectrum bulbs that mimic real daylight… and filmed what happened next.

The difference is shocking: hyperactive, off-the-wall kids suddenly calm down, sit still, and focus like never before. The control classrooms under standard lights? Chaos as usual.

This is real 1970s footage from Dr. John Ott’s groundbreaking work (1976, Sarasota, FL). His time-lapse cameras caught something schools still ignore: artificial light spectrum and flicker can literally rewire developing brains.

Modern science backs it up hard:
- 2023 meta-review of 59 studies: kids are WAY more sensitive to light color & timing than adults

- Blue-enriched “daylight” lighting improves attention, task-switching, reading fluency

- Poor classroom lighting = higher stress, absenteeism, even myopia risk

- Natural/full-spectrum light = up to 25% higher test scores in some studies

We spend billions on curriculum and tech… but most classrooms still run 1970s prison-grade lighting.

Parents, teachers, anyone with kids: watch this clip and tell me this isn’t worth rethinking.

The 70s called — they were onto something huge.

Who else thinks it’s time for a classroom lighting revolution? Drop your thoughts

https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1991999231373230464