Ivan Illich, an Austrian philosopher and social critic, was known for his influential writings challenging conventional institutions, including education and healthcare, with a focus on decentralization and human autonomy.
Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.
School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.
Institutions create needs. If you are in an institution, the more they can get you to need them, the more effectively they can control you.
Professionalism is a powerful lever for the monopolization of power. The bureaucratic structure of credentialing is an effective instrument for inducing professional consciousness.
A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
People who need people are threatened by people who don't. The idea of 'I need you' is an invitation to control, manipulation, and abuse.
School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.
Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.