1. Ivan Illich and me

2. Topics
Brand new world
Deschooling
Learning is the work
Resources
Jay Cross
jaycross.com

5. Deschooling

6. Ivan Illich, 1926 - 2002
Ivan Illich, Austrian
philosopher, Roman
Catholic priest and critic of
the institutions of
contemporary western
culture and their effects on
the provenance and practice
of education, medicine,
work, energy use, and
economic development.
“Deschooling Society”

7. Separated at birth?

8. “Together we have come to
realize that for most men the
right to learn is curtailed by
the obligation to attend
school.”
"School divides life into two segments, which are
increasingly of comparable length. As much as
anything else, schooling implies custodial care for
persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by
the simple fact that a school has been built to
serve them."

9. “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.”

10. “New educational institutions
would...facilitate access for the
learner: to allow him to look
into the windows of the control
room or the parliament, if he
cannot get in by the door.”

11. “When pressed to specify how they acquired
what they know and value, will readily admit
that they learned it more often outside than
inside school. Their knowledge of facts, their
understanding of life and work came to them
from friendship or love, while viewing TV, or
while reading, from examples of peers or the
challenge of a street encounter. Or they may
have learned what they know through the
apprenticeship ritual for admission to a street
gang or the initiation to a hospital, newspaper
city room, plumber's shop, or insurance
office.”

12. “A good educational system should have
three purposes: it should
1. provide all who want to learn with
access to available resources at any
time in their lives;
2. empower all who want to share what
they know to find those who want to
learn it from them; and, finally,
3. furnish all who want to present an issue
to the public with the opportunity to
make their challenge known.”

13. Why School is the Wrong Model for Learning
Irrelevant content
Not real world
Forgetting curve
Students seen as deficient
Taught by authority figure
Focus on individuals, not groups
Stifles creativity
Give answers rather than action
Assembly-line approach
“Ends” with graduation

14. Opportunity web:
networks, not curriculum
Peer
Matching
Learning Skill
Objects Exchanges
Educators
-at-large
"What kinds of things and people might
learners want to be in contact with in order to learn?"

15. Courses are dead.
Learning ecosystems are the future.

17. 1976

18. Our core goal is to meet the needs of working
and underserved students by giving you the
chance to earn your college degree. Flexible
scheduling, faculty with real-world knowledge
and a consistent and effective curriculum design
help make higher education accessible to
everyone.
John Sperling, Founder

19. 1997 Largest private university in US
2000 Enrollment tops 100,000 students
2003 Enrollment tops 200,000 students

20. Illich FBI check

21. Illich FBI check

22. Deschooling Society University of Phoenix
Radical innovation, Radical innovation,
investigated by FBI investigated by FBI
Learning objects Workplace & project
Peer matching Age of students 19 - 49
Skill exchanges Ground level research
Educators-at-large Practitioner faculty
Anti-credentialism Credit experiential learning

24. Resources

25. jaycross.com

27. Google Internet Time Alliance

28. Google informl (no “a”)