Following The American Psychological Association’s Guidelines
Abstract
The educational system in any society may have its merits in prioritizing students with overall necessary skills and attributes as prerequisites to life-long careers. But many arguments proposed by educational philosophers over the years have spurned the question of contemporary education as being mandatory. Perhaps traditional educational practices to prepare students of higher education possess the credentials for related practices. Yet, nowadays many students, especially those enrolled in higher studies no longer possess the required knowledge and training for practical attributes. Do institutionalized schools actually countermeasure the mainstream of learning, or will they open to redefine the norm of the educational system? Do structured schooling environments prepare the student for adjustment in post-educational practices? Hence, this article illustrates the critique of renowned educational philosophers who express their views of educational incapability and proponent suggestions to reevaluate student progress once removes from the traditional conformity. As a former student who attended a few post-secondary curricula, I shall add to these perspectives and place my own thoughts of how judgmental the current educational system is organized, or perhaps disorganized. Although an immense comparison between the present and the past serves as the formulation of schooling systems, I am able to present my own philosophy along with Ivan Illich’s and Stanley Aronowitz popularized viewpoints, but mostly Illich’s, as his vision was more explicable that Aronowitz. Disagreements with de-schooling are also presented as no solution to overhauling a long-time accepted practice may come without the concept of challenge. Interestingly enough, any alternative proposal against the norm is generally observed as unorthodox and counterproductive. As will be explained in this paper, the ideal institutionalization of education will include some support and refute by Illich’s and Aronowitz principles, but a few arguments against their principles are also present later in this paper.
Keywords: higher education, educational systems, alternative education, institutionalized learning, traditional learning, traditional education
- What Is De-school Education?
The term de-schooling may sound adversarial and unsympathetic, and can be misunderstood by many. But how it can be defined unilaterally, is the notion of abandoning the norm of learning and resuming learning from resources other than the traditional educational system. This definition may be associated with the concept of what or how students learn when not attending traditional schools or if they were to attend an ideal, utopian-type school. By Illich’s critical definition, de-schooling is a process that conflicts with institutionalization, traditional schools, teachers, and full-time attendance. The stifling confines of organized schools do hinder the student from an everyday, hands-on experimentation with practical applications, because too many curricula have adapted general studies and academic programs since the 2nd World War (Illich, 1970). Not there is anything malefic about these types of programs, but schools on most levels have lost touch with bridging the gap between the written text and its applications in theory and practice.
Staley Aronowitz put forth his philosophy that learning, as educational philosophers argue, is not limited to classrooms, but absorbs everyday life experiences for a lifetime, and if schools are to be institutionalized, shall be self-serving and uncritical (Giroux, 1988). As a result of attending lengthy streamlined studies throughout the year, many homeschooling programs have been developed to disassociate from conventional teachings to compare in-class learning from independent learning to measure children’s aptitudes. Although, not always proving to be superior, homeschooling has earned enough vestige and popularity to be just as effective as regular in-class attendance, because of concentration and frequent interaction with parents or private instructions. The length of time it takes for students to readjust their thinking by removing themselves from traditional education to an unstructured environment also forms part of the definition of de-schooling. During this recovery period, students have their chance to unlearn what they have been instructed to seasonally follow, including being subjected to learning evaluation and free of judgment of frequent testing.
The transition of de-schooling between children and their parents also faces its challenges. The generation gap continues to suggest that most parents of these children have attended organized schools, whether they are public, private, religious, or secular, are ingrained with this same notion, and feel their children must attend school in the same manner. Yet many parents fail to explain the pertinence of all pre-arranged subjects that children must be enrolled in. Chances are, as also argued by peers, most taught material will not be relevant to real-life applications, and deemed a waste of time. Evidently, school overall becomes a waste of time, and berated as being incapable of providing and preparing students with appropriate educational concepts.
Shall schools and their associated systems be called to an end and entice society to allow self-education? According to Illich’s principle, de-schooling sways from the educational model of absolution and shall instead pave the way for students, and people in general, to learn on their own. For anyone to learn efficiently, they shall be free of any organized or institutionalized system, and perform on a self-paced motive. Hence, the consensus that enrolling in post-secondary curricula extends opportunities and freedom is a fallacy (Illich, 1970). Multitudes of post-graduates are faced with lack of experience and knowledge of practical applications, as only 30 percent of their curricula are applicable. Another familiar complaint is post-secondary programs have expanded to accommodate numerous course material irrelevant to the very intent of the curriculum itself. The supposed rationale is to be equipped with a solid and mass education. Teaching methods are often targeted toward conformists of working class citizens conditioned to entrapment beneath a common, single lens of routine participation.
2.0 Works of Illich’s Anti-Institutional Arguments
Although Illich’s anti-institutional arguments in the educational entity concerning the spread of the bureaucratic learning, and his vision of de-schooling education was unlikely to make much ground, he managed to pursue four aspects of his critiques:
- process of institutionalization,
- experts and expertise,
- commodification, and,
- principle of counter-productivity
2.1 Process of Institutionalization
Institutions have surely existed and recurred for centuries, but transitioning into the modern world, the number of institutions has dramatically increased. With this geometric increase, humanity’s way of life is constantly channelling through the funnels of institutions. Whatever the agendas of these institutions may be, are irrelevant, yet they dictate the behavioural patterns of humanity and how to operate. The process that students were streamlined through the learning scheme only diminished their integrity of their wellbeing, and become susceptible to mindless collectiveness. Their singularities and individualistic perceptions are programmed into monotony. They then lack creativity to which they have the privilege to be masters of their own art.
2.2 Experts and Expertise
Expert culture used to assign only designated candidates to properly act within their professional disciplines. Students no longer hold the desire for the proficiency of their professions. Unfortunately the trends in the desire for financial gains instead of humble professions have conquered the educational system. Aptitudes and scheduled and mandatory evaluations for qualification are either overlooked or ignored. One of the reasons is to maintain the integrity of the faculty boards. In essence, the boards institutionalize and dictate the knowledge students are to acquire they deem necessary. For example, if a university graduate student in medicine has formulated a cure for blindness, or a mathematical graduate has formulate a method for performing numerical calculations without the dependent use of a calculator, these phenomena would be deemed unorthodox or controversial, and be dismissed as incapable conclusions.
The idea of expertise also creates unnecessary branching of unbalanced occupations. In other words, experts in particular fields used to hold broad talents and were spoken highly of. Nowadays, an excess of experts for each specific branch far outweigh the broad range of experts. Consequently, most, if not all, of these experts truly do not understand what they have learned, and rely on the knowledge and practice of another.
2.3 Commodification
Growing up, students have been ingrained mostly by their teachers and their parents with the belief that school is the only surefire way to earn better wages and better jobs. Lack of schooling, so as they have been told, would render them useless and placed beneath the lowest levels of society. With the conviction that school is compulsory and it is what determines intelligence, students fall into the knowledge trap that academic knowledge is power (Sachs, 1992). However, knowledge acquired by other means outside traditional schooling is branded to be irrelevant. Any academic seeking to be self-taught is ostracized and would not be allowed to conform to any consumption process conceptualized in any profession or industry, where learning is not classified as a life-long activity. Although learning, similarly to the concept that knowledge is power, does not induce power either. However, it may measure the potential of an individual’s productivity, since the active learning plays as a springboard.
Illich’s critique of learning is also cited by Fromm (1979), where learning becomes a marketed and much needed commodity. High demands for commodities create scarcity. Learning then loses its sense of activity and conviviality. Therefore students are blindly enrolled in obscure forms of education where appropriate knowledge is falsely presented and becomes an exploited possession. Aronowitz protested that schools only enforce learning packages that simply do not prepare students for the real world. The knowledge they acquire is confined to schools, which have monopolized learning credentials, because schools are the only possessors of these credentials.
2.4 Principle of Counter-productivity
When productivity paints a specific context, something or someone with an idealized mind usually has a counter agenda, in which case counter productivity. Some sources as in Reimer (1971), Illich was labeled as critiquing too harshly. However, Illich was not anti-institutional, but merely against a certain threshold of institutionalization of schools. Post World War 2 then still recognized multitude self-taught and self-educated scholars and pioneers without any formidable post-secondary schooling. Presently schools monopolize the power to alter curricula and provide more students with counter production. They become the future experts and perform the opposite of the intent of their achievements.
Some schools have dominated student psychological fundamentals in education. They are clandestinely tainted with performing altering programming in which students who formerly held their principles, have unwittingly become pawns of their own curricula. Unknowingly, they had their learning principles, as well as their ideals, had changed. As academic hopefuls become engrossed in their anticipation, their funnel of knowledge prior to enrollment has evidently become unlearned by counter production.
3.0 Learning De-schooling Networking Tools
One of the main points and mistaken ideas permeating throughout educational systems is that teaching (and teachers alone) is what essentially facilitates learning, yet schools insist on this fallacy. Since schools are the products of institutions, this fallacy successfully outreaches into the workplace. Surely, teachers may be necessary to facilitate preludes to learning, but still the classroom is formed and left in mercy of the teachers and their goals without giving regards to student goals.
For students to define themselves, de-schooling education, as Illich envisioned, depends on the following three main reciprocals:
- between a skill teacher and a student,
- between peers engaged in learning the same lessons, and
- between a student and a teacher’s master
All these reciprocal skills do not pose any hierarchy of any kind, but only to serve as an exchange of instruction and learning from one rank to another. The distribution of material would be at the discretion of the student to which they have no authority to answer to. Illich devised a system comprising of resource centers operators and teachers who guide them in the usage of these resources. Those who guide the teachers are skilled candidates in the field rather than actual experts.
This form of tool networking promotes learning independently of an organized system as is proposed in schools. Students feel more in control of their learning abilities. The concept of learning becomes a vessel for acquiring new skills. Illich emphasizes that self-motivation empowers students to learning new skills and material, and since they feel in control, may be granted the privilege to the decision of advancement once they feel they reached certain levels of achievement. The traditional school system would no longer judge students based on examinations or grading systems, which only serve to indicate student knowledge in print. Series of examinations also neglect most relevant subject matter, and shall be utilized for tutorials or preparations for actual testing. Although assigning mentors and other guidance counsellors shall be advised to ensure student remain on course, by self-evaluation, students have the assurance to face any challenge in the real world. For better restructuring of graduating students, by the time they learn necessary acquired skills, they possess the power to rightfully and honourably shape their futures, not them being shaped by their futures.
4.0 Educational Systems Overhaul
Regardless of how successful and how well intentioned a system has functioned, any concept of change is always challenged fear and scepticism, which is understandable. But Illich’s proposed changes to schools and other learning establishments have not exactly been detailed. What he suggested was new and improved approaches to somewhat seep into and permeate throughout the educational system. Primarily trial curricula may be offered for students willing to step beyond routine practices, as many special programs already have been introduced in schools for decades. Most students, particularly beginning from intermediate grades simply do not enjoy attending mainstream education. A convivial environment where they can learn at their own pace would attract popularity. Aronowitz focused on an identical note with improving the academic environment through free independent learning, but his focus only captured the macro-scale patterns, and not the specifics (Williams, 2005). He succeeded though, in proposing individual achievement which is more important firsthand before a gregarious achievement can be reached.
Besides attending daily programs, Illich touched upon learning as a home-based institution where parents may be the prime educators of children in their formative years. This notion develops closer relationships between children and their parents, and has access to all the facilities needed to educate children. Parents would also be provided the opportunity to understand their children because of more time allotted to their children, and de-school themselves in the process.
5.0 Would De-Schooling Work?
The issue is not solely in institutionalized learning. Golden nuggets exist in all and every profession and faculty. The institutionalization concept on its own can be advantageous and depends on who sets the proposal for it. As mentioned in Sub-Section 2.4, the problem is what happens when the threshold of institutionalization is reached. But not many understand nor ever of de-schooling. Illiteracy does not only pertain to the inability to read or write, but also the inability to unlearn, as is the case with many illiterate adults. The institutionalized learning has trained most to think conventionally which has been the instigator of illiteracy in the first place. Shall professors be blamed for this illiteracy? Professors were once students, and like their present students, have been trained to fall into mainstream education by their professors and divulged in unguided focus. Only indirectly are they responsible for channeling their students through their own experiences. By introducing convivial systems, students manage to utilize their participation in which their progress is about them, rather than those teaching them. The knowledge and teaching patterns are executed exclusively for the joy and gain of knowledge, instead of knowledge acquired to control and manipulate others.
A few counter thoughts may be said to Illich’s as not being fully executable. He fails to acknowledge that teachers and professors are still human and students require mentors when they are ready, especially at adolescent levels. Because not all students progress simultaneously, Illich poses no argument that against de-schooling as the ultimate solution. De-schooling, as per Illich’s definition which may hold promise, also appears to take more of a mutinous program against educational tradition rather than an equalized learning aptitude. In fact, more praise than reprove from educational philosophers exists to Illich’s de-schooling ideals. As with cases of any profession, merits of excellence exist on both extremes. Some teachers and professors will surely plan to launch their own agenda of de-schooling, which may end up tainting its intent. If for argument’s sake, de-schooling were to suddenly replace institutionalized learning, would Illich’s and Aronowitz’s future supporters redefine de-schooling in their names? Automatically is announced the surety of de-schooling without forecasting its programming and long-term effects, even if followers of Illich outweigh his opponents. Perhaps traditional schooling cannot be completely replaced with de-schooling concepts especially for younger learners who require home and private schooling. The only method then for younger learners is if their parents are willing to undergo de-schooling will the seeds of education alteration have positive influences on children’s learning abilities.
Counter thoughts against Aronowitz suggest that he seemingly prefers a visual culture opposite that of mastery of techniques and concepts. Literacy is the best tool for dialogue and social relatonships free from towering social structures. But he does not consider the consequences of humanity free of authority. Regardless of the veil of authority, at times an authority is necessary, yet Aronowitz has a vision somewhat not much different between utopia and dytopia. Without the realism of the world and access to visual culture cannot be rescinded, which Aronowitz feels to be undeniable. A structural foundation only subjects studetns to failure in theory and practice, because the essence of education is merely political on his part. As much as Aronowitz states his rebellion about a fixed and foundationalized framework, his opinions do not really provide any solid background or viable solutions to put into practic in spite of his proponents of de-schooling. He views the destructuring from the top to the bottom where the framework is particulary stronger. His philosophy may not correspond with Illich’s, as Illich at least has braved his solutions by examining the bottom of the framework, as in with children early in stages of learning.
Positively, as long as de-schooling follows the reciprocals aforementioned in Section 3.0, where labels of authority remain eliminated and does not cross the thresholds, de-schooling would be an expedient alternative to learning traditionally in schools. The only danger arrives when experts wish to experiment too archetypally to seek the best solutions, and obliviously cause reversion back to institutionalized learning. The physical devices and mental constructs can be itemized as convivial tools to bridge the gap between individual learning. Many industrial besides educational institutes discourage human interaction and only focus on production. But human interdependence evolves a new meaning to unbiased and productive learning. How often do teachers encourage speaking with another during class? Hence conviviality breaks the barriers of misunderstanding among students, since one entire classroom is deemed impossible for a teacher to ensure progress, and interaction among students would boost active learning. Perhaps the future to be envisioned is to steadily incorporate de-schooling methods as suggested by Illich and allow future educational philosophers and students decide for themselves. Because de-schooling would primarily display its effects on students in the early stages, schools and other learning institutions shall be tested. If proven to be successful, de-schooling shall demonstrate positive outcome on the rest of society as well.
References
Ilich, I. (1970). Deschooling Society. http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html. Retrieved 2012-12-29.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling Society. New York: Harper and Row, ISBN 0-06-012139-4
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An Essay On Alternatives In Education. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Williams, J.J. (2005). History As A Challenge To The Idea of the University. JStor Home.
Giroux, H.A. (1988). Teachers As Intellectuals. Bergin & Garvey Publishers Inc.
Sachs, W. (1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide To Knowledge As Power. London: Zed Books.
Fromm. E. (1979) To Have Or To Be. London: Abacus.
