Ivan Dominic Illich

 

Born: September 4, 1926 Vienna, Austria.

Died: December 2, 2002 (aged 76) Bremen, Germany.

Era: Contemporary philosophy.

Region: Western philosophy.

School: Catholicism.

Main interests: Philosophy of educationphilosophy of technology.

 Ivan Dominic Illich was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticizes modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that constrains learning to narrow situations in a fairly short period of the human lifespan. His 1975 book Medical Nemesis, importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, argues that industrialized society widely impairs quality of life by over-medicating life, pathologizing normal conditions, creating false dependency, and limiting other more healthful solutions. Illich called himself "an errant pilgrim.

 The presentation of an educator like Iván Illich is not an easy task. It is, first of all, a thinker located in a particular historical context, such as that of the 1960s. A period characterized by radical criticism of the capitalist order and its social institutions. Among these, the school.

It is also a complex personality. In those years it was said of Iván Illich that he was an intelligent man who liked to surround himself with intelligent people and it was difficult for him to hide his contempt for what he considered stupidity. He could be the friendliest man in dealing with him or brutally ridicule those who questioned him. Tireless worker, polyglot, cosmopolitan, his ideas, whether they were about the Church and its changes, culture and education, medicine or transportation in modern societies, generated controversies that ended up transforming him into one of the characters of his time. .

However, Illich himself was partly causing the controversies: his personality, his style, his working methods, the radicalism of his ideas. In fact, for educators, Illich is the father of de-schooling education, the author who irreducibly condemns the school system and schools, characterizing them as one of the many public institutions that perform anachronistic functions that do not keep up with the speed of progress. changes and only serve to stabilize and protect the structure of the society that produced them.

Illich argues that school teaches that the result of attendance is valuable learning, that the value of learning increases with the amount of input information, and that this value can be measured and documented through degrees and diplomas.