In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Ivan IllichRead
The pupil is ... 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the education system for confusing superficial indicators of learning with actual understanding.
Ivan Illich's quote reflects on the flaws of traditional education, suggesting that it often mistakes the processes associated with school, such as grades and diplomas, for genuine learning and competence. He warns that true learning should involve the ability to think independently and creatively, rather than just repeating established knowledge or conforming to institutional metrics.
Themes
EducationLearningCompetenceGradesDiploma
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about reforming education, one might say, 'As Ivan Illich stated, we must not confuse a diploma with true competence.'
More from Ivan Illich
All quotes βSchool is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.
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School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.
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The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.
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Effective health care depends on self-care; this fact is currently heralded as if it were a discovery.
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Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organised to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
Ivan IllichRead
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Your ancestors fought for you to have a share in that institution over there. It's yours. See the school board, and every Friday night hold your meetings there. Have your wives clean it up Saturday morning for the children to enter Monday. Your organization is not a praying institution. It's a fighting institution. It's an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!
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I don't care who writes a nation's laws - or crafts its advanced treaties - if I can write its economics textbooks.
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The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.
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