| Chapter 2: | Pattern of the Insurrection and Modernity |
beings. Feudalism does not galvanize potential human powers and the school under it becomes manipulative since it treats the student as a mere commodity. In other words, education under feudalism, instead of being a means to an end, becomes an end in itself. This leads to alienation.
Proponents of de-schooling (Illich, Reimer, Postman and Weingartner, and Lister)34 have tried to explain the root causes of these dehumanizing conditions in their studies. Ivan Ilich, the main theoretician in that field, posits that man’s apparent dehumanization is a result of the institutional frameworks spawned by a mass production and mass consumption society. The institutions, he argues, develop into a pervasive and powerful force. In the process, they become “anti-educational” and anti-social.
Illich further argues that despite the claim that Western schools are non-political and non-ideological, one of their primary aims is socializing the child to accept the existing basic tenets of the status quo political system. Western schooling, according to him, has the subtle motive of internalization or the hidden mechanism for persuading children to accept prevalent political realities so that when they start work they are kept “democratically” in place.
For Illich, the socialization process in schools takes many shapes. First, children are initiated into the belief that everything is measured which means that all kinds of values (e.g., happiness in democratic or dictatorial societies) can be measured and ranked like an ordinary commodity. Second, children are schooled into disciplined consumption patterns and start to entertain the myth of unending consumption. Third, and perhaps most importantly, schools legitimize the divine origin of economic, social, and political stratification that exists much more vigorously and effectively than the Christian churches have been able to do in the last couple of millennia.
The works of Paulo Friere mainly concentrate on literacy studies for adults but his major concern, just like the de-schoolers, is alienation and the pervasive, sterile educational environment which arises due to lack of relevant and fulfilling political content in schooling.35 Alienation is, in his view, born of the mentality of “consumerism.”