Ivan Illich

Wringing the Neck of the Swan: Second Language Learning as a Tool for Conviviality

by Kristin Jones

The author compares industrial (and modernist) second language learning approaches to convivial second language... more The author compares industrial (and modernist) second language learning approaches to convivial second language learning approaches. The paper utilizes the ideas of conviviality as described in the writings of Ivan Illich. Examples come from the author's experiences as a second language teacher and second language learner. The author includes recommendations for a more convivial approach toward second language learning, both for school environments and for public learning experiences in the commons.

Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: Technology, Politics and the Reconstruction of Education

by Richard Kahn

Co-authored with Doug Kellner, Policy Futures in Education, Vol. 5 (4), 2007

Critical Pedagogy Taking the Illich Turn

by Richard Kahn

The International Journal of Illich Studies 1(1), 2009

Deschooling society and the aims of education (Ivan Illich's view on education and society)

by Ott Puumeister

A Pedagogy of Fluency in a Densely Woven World

by Greg Graham

My Masters Thesis

    Evidence indicates that literacy and critical thinking of high school and college graduates is in... more     Evidence indicates that literacy and critical thinking of high school and college graduates is in decline. This paper asserts that a primary cause of this decline is ubiquitous media technology. Students are exposed to a constant stream of entertainment, information and digital sociality, which tends to fill all the gaps of their lives. Historically, these gaps have provided opportunities for engaging in “meaning-making” activities like personal banter, storytelling, sitting down with a good book, or contemplating matters of personal importance. This thesis proposes two keys for getting literacy and critical thinking back on track through the first-year writing classroom: 1) emphasizing the recovery of fluency through students’ personal narratives presented in an oral, face-to-face context, and 2) sharpening students’ attentional skills by fostering the meditative pause in the classroom and equipping them for “desert island discourse,” which composition teacher and theorist Peter Elbow defines as “the ability to talk reflectively to ourselves.”

THE TRANS/NATIONAL STUDY OF CULTURE AND THE INSTITUTIONS OF HUMAN SPECIATION

by Jon Solomon

Book Review: Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire by Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo

by Richard Kahn

Journal of Educational Controversy, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2008

Love Hurts: Ecopedagogy Between Avatars and Elegies

by Richard Kahn

Teachers Education Quarterly, 2010

Education and Exemplars: Learning to Doubt the Overman

by Babette Babich

Citation info:
Babette Babich, “Education and Exemplars: Learning to Doubt the Overman,” In: Paul Fairfield, ed., Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 125-149.


This is only an uncorrected proof copy and certain infelicities remain. The print copy to be found in Fairfield's collection corrects these and includes a range of other essays.

This paper first considers Ivan Illich’s challenging book, <Deschooling Society> as a general prelude to a... more This paper first considers Ivan Illich’s challenging book, <Deschooling Society> as a general prelude to a discussion of Nietzsche’s philosophical engagement with his classical
philology, a profession which he argued to be essentially pedagogical. Illich argues that schooling is inherently an education in consumption and thus Illich echoes many of the observations of Jacques Ellul. Where Nietzsche argues that it is incumbent upon the individual to become, as it were, his own educator by his or her choice of an exemplar, I take this to a brief re-examination of Nietzsche's ironic use of the overman.

না-ইস্কুল বা/ ba nice School-er akkhan (A Narrative on Unschool or Nice School)

by Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

2011Tepantar. IX. (pp147-63)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52865023/nice-school

Being unnecessarily disturbed by the schooling system of the West Bengal, India and consulting the statistical reports... more Being unnecessarily disturbed by the schooling system of the West Bengal, India and consulting the statistical reports of National Crime Bureau on the bleak scenario of schooling, a father withdrew his son from the Ideological state Apparatus (a la Althusser) and followed the Illichian methods of deschooling.
Based on this particular narrative, the author of this paper mounted to the pros and cons of de-/un-/home-schooling society by taking cue from Rabindranath Tagore, M.K. Gandhi, Ivan Illich, Paolo Friere, Basil Bernstein et al. and the Eklavya experiment (Hosengabad, Madhya Pradesh, India) on deschooling society. According to the author, this type of poor’s education is now subsumed, appropriated, approximated and codified by the super-rich schools. This type of synthetic hegemonization has led to a packaging of de-/un-/home-schooling as a bureaucratic knowledge industry ( with ancillary industries of health drinks, school uniforms, bad text/reference books etc.) through the electronic capitalistic opportunity web. However, the author showed the way of retreat from such money-sign based knowledge industry by discussing the positive sides of UNICEF’s educational guidelines along with Yashpal Committee reports and National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)’s curriculum framework, Though the implementation of all these child-centric self-motivated education as suggested by these agencies is far from the “real”-ity. Therefore, the author insisted on the Tagore’s atmasakti (self-empowerment) that does not alienate pupils from the necessary labor as the corporatization of mainstream educational industry ideologically leads to surplus labor extraction.
Thus the non-school (in Bangla, /na-iskul/ ) has become nice school with a sweet punning.


Keywords: de-/un-/home-schooling, Ideological state Apparatus, bureaucratic knowledge industry,electronic capitalism, (in)visible pedagogy, opportunity web, biological mother,nice school

Accepted Paper Series