This document discusses alternative approaches to education compared to traditional schooling. It summarizes the views of thinkers like Ivan Illich, John Holt, and John Taylor Gatto who were critical of compulsory schooling and argued that it focuses on social control rather than learning. They promoted alternative models like deschooling society and unschooling that reject compulsory schooling and prioritize learning outside of traditional classrooms through competence-based and self-directed learning. The document also examines the economic, ideological and social control purposes of traditional schooling models.

1. Taking sociology into youth work:
It starts in the sociology of
education

2. Brainstorm
• What is the purpose of
formal schooling in
countries like Aotearoa?
• What are the
strengths/weaknesses of
this?
• What is the purpose of
professions like youth
development work?
• What are the
strengths/weaknesses of
this?

3. So, what is ‘alternative’
education?

4. What is it ‘alternative’ to?

7. “If you happen to be a little innovative, or
maybe you forgot to come to school one
day because you were reading a book or
something, that’s a tragedy, that’s a crime
– because you’re not supposed to think,
you’re supposed to obey, and just
proceed through the material in whatever
way they require”
(Chomsky, 2003, p.28)

8. The Classroom can be a Space for
Liberation

9. What’s Holding It Back
• History
– Plato
– Mass Schooling
– Education Act 1877
• Purpose
– Philanthropic
– Economic
– Ideological
– Social Control

11. Primary
School
Technical HS
College University
Working
Class
Jobs
Middle
Class
Jobs
Maori
School
Technical HS
College University
Working
Class
Jobs
Middle
Class
Jobs

12. Primary
School
High School
University
Primary School
AS NCEA University
ITO/PTE
Working
Class
Jobs
Middle
Class
Jobs
High School
US NCEA ITO/PTE

13. The Economic, Ideological and
Social Control Purposes of
Schooling
Creates a Problematic Foundation

15. Ivan Illich
• Experiences of school
• The role of faith
• A person of three
folds:
– Iconoclast
– Polymath
– Apophatic theology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

16. Deschooling Society
• Any form of
schooling actually
‘dumbs’ people
down
• Hope and
expectation
• Knowledge and
society
• The alternative

17. Deschooling Society
To reiterate, deschooling argues for:
• Less ‘schools’ not more
• Unlimited alternatives
• Learning that focuses on competence before
qualifications
• Technology that is publicly controlled - toward a
transparent society
• Social ‘goods’ before economic gain
• Trust between older and younger, teacher and student
• Schools weaken people’s sense of place, self, other
people
• The rejection of compulsory schooling

18. John Holt
• US educator, teacher
and matrix pill-taker
• Argued that school were
a contemporary myth
and set children up for
failure
• Started the
‘un’schooling movement
(a very different type of
homeschooling)

19. "It's not that I feel that
school is a good idea gone
wrong, but a wrong idea
from the word go. It's a nutty
notion that we can have a
place where nothing but
learning happens, cut off
from the rest of life."
(John Holt)

20. “Learning is like breathing, it is a
natural human activity: it is part of
being alive. A
person who is active, curious, who
explores the world using all his or
her senses, who meets life with
energy and enthusiasm - as all
babies do - is learning. Our ability to
learn, like our ability to breathe does
not need to be improved or
tampered with.”
(John Holt)

22. John Taylor Gatto
• Organic intellectual
• School teacher and
social activist
• Brought together the
arguments of social
control, social
stratification, and
social control
• Attempted to redefine
teaching

23. “Whatever an education is, it should
make you a unique individual, not a
conformist; it should furnish you with
an original spirit with which to tackle
the big challenges; it should allow
you to find values which will be your
road map through life; it should
make you spiritually rich, a person
who loves whatever you are doing,
wherever you are, whomever you
are with; it should teach you what is
important; how to live and how to
die”
(John Taylor Gatto)

25. What are your thoughts?

26. “Real education is about getting people
involved in thinking for themselves – and
that’s a tricky business to know how to do
well, but clearly it requires that whatever
it is you’re looking at has to somehow
catch people’s interest and make them
want to think, and make them want to
pursue and explore”
(Chomsky, 2003, p.27, author’s
emphasis)