Deschooling Society

In Deschooling Society (1971) Ivan Illich imagines wresting education free from all institutional structures. Rather than a pedagogy that requires curricula and authorities, Illich reimagines education simply as the “meetings of interested persons” (20). Significantly, Illich explains that this informal, decentered education might be facilitated by the power of computing:

Let me give, as an example of what I mean, a description of how an intellectual match might work in New York City. Each man, at any given moment and at a minimum price, could identify himself to a computer with his address and telephone number, indicating the book, article, film, or recording on which he seeks a partner for discussion. Within days he could receive by mail the list of others who recently had taken the same initiative. This list would enable him by telephone to arrange for a meeting with persons who initially would be known exclusively by the fact that they requested a dialogue about the same subject.

Matching people according to their interest in a particular title is radically simple. It permits identification only on the basis of a mutual desire to discuss a statement recorded by a third person, and it leaves the initiative of arranging the meeting to the individual. (19)

There are a number of obvious problems with this idea. But I want to focus on how Illich here essentially describes something like a primitive form of the internet—however it’s the naive, utopian sort of thinking about networks that captivated us all thirty years ago. Then came 4chan. And social media echo chambers. And a conspiracy to harvest adrenachrome from babies by a cabal of deep-state pedophiles. If anything, the past few years have underlined the importance of expertise as a kind of control rod to prevent runaway chain reactions of confirmation bias. What is the legacy of thinkers like Illich and Freire in the wake of these cultural and technological shifts?