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Latin America Can No Longer Tolerate Being A Haven For United States Liberals Who Cannot Make Their Point At Home, An Outlet For Apostles Too "apostolic" To Find Their Vocation As Competent Professionals Within Their Own Community. The Hardware Salesman Threatens To Dump Second-rate Imitations Of Parishes, Schools And Catechisms -- Out-moded Even In The United States -- All Around The Continent. The Traveling Escapist Threatens Further To Confuse A Foreign World With His Superficial Protests, Which Are Not Viable Even At Home.

-Ivan Illich

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Latin America Can No

Ivan Illich

...

Latin America Can No Longer Tolerate Being A Haven For United States Liberals Who Cannot Make Their Point At Home, An Outlet For Apostles Too "apostolic" To Find Their Vocation As Competent Professionals Within Their Own Community. The Hardware Salesman Threatens To Dump Second-rate Imitations Of Parishes, Schools And Catechisms -- Out-moded Even In The United States -- All Around The Continent. The Traveling Escapist Threatens Further To Confuse A Foreign World With His Superficial Protests, Which Are Not Viable Even At Home.

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Effective Health Care Depends On Self-care; This Fact Is Currently Heralded As If It Were A Discovery.

The Household Became The Place Where The Consumption Of Wages Takes Place.

I Was Recently Told, 'you're A Liar!' When I Said To Somebody I Walked Down The Spine Of The Andes. Every Spaniard In The Sixteenth, Seventeenth Century Did That. The Idea That Somebody Could Just Walk! He Can Jog Perhaps In The Morning, But He Can't Walk Anywhere! The World Has Become Inaccessible Because We Drive There.

The Pupil's Imagination Is 'schooled' To Accept Service In Place Of Value. Medical Treatment Is Mistaken For Health Care, Social Work For The Improvement Of Community Life, Police Protection For Safety, Military Poise For National Security, The Rat Race For Productive Work.

Productive Work

The Future Depends More Upon Our Choice Of Institutions Which Support A Life Of Action Than On Our Developing New Ideologies And Technologies.

We Must Rediscover The Distinction Between Hope And Expectation.

Difficult Times

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.

To Deschool Means To Abolish The Power Of One Person To Oblige Another.

I Intend To Discuss Some Perplexing Issues Which Are Raised Once We Embrace The Hypothesis That Society Can Be Deschooled; To Search For Criteria Which May Help Us Distinguish Institutions Which Merit Development Because They Support Learning In A Deschooled Milieu; And To Clarify Those Personal Goals Which Would Foster The Advent Of An Age Of Leisure (schole) As Opposed To An Economy Dominated By Service Industries.

What Kinds Of Things And People Might Learners Want To Be In Contact With In Order To Learn?

The Usdhew Calculates That 7% Of All Patients Suffer Compensable Injuries While Hospitalized .....one Out Of Every Five Patients Admitted To A Typical Research Hospital Acquires An Iatrogenic (caused By The Treatment Process) Disease, One Case In Thirty Leading To Death. Half Of These Episodes Result From Complications Of Drug Therapy; Amazingly, One In Ten Come From Diagnostic Procedures.

The Compulsion To Do Good Is An Innate American Trait. Only North Americans Seem To Believe That They Always Should, May, And Actually Can Choose Somebody With Whom To Share Their Blessings. Ultimately This Attitude Leads To Bombing People Into The Acceptance Of Gifts.

The Goals Of Development Are Always And Everywhere Stated In Terms Of Consumer Value Packages Standardized Around The North Atlantic-and Therefore Always And Everywhere Imply More Privileges For A Few... Underdevelopment Is The Result Of A State Of Mind Common To Both Socialist And Capitalist Countries. Present Development Goals Are Neither Desirable Nor Reasonable. Unfortunately Antiimperialism Is No Antidote.

Losses Of A Kind Of Satisfaction That Have No Market Equivalent Don't Show Up In The Calculations Of Economists.

Observations Of The Sickening Effect Of Programmed Environments Show That People In Them Become Indolent, Impotent, Narcissistic And Apolitical. The Political Process Breaks Down, Because People Cease To Be Able To Govern Themselves; They Demand To Be Managed.

Traditional Society Was More Like A Set Of Concentric Circles Of Meaningful Structures, While Modern Man Must Learn How To Find Meaning In Many Structures To Which He Is Only Marginally Related. In The Village, Language And Architecture And Religion And Work And Family Customs Were Consistent With One Another, Mutually Explanatory And Reinforcing. To Grow Into One Implied A Growth Into Others.

To Be Ignorant Or Unconvinced Of One's Own Needs Has Become The Unforgivable Anti-social Act. The Good Citizen Is One Who Imputes Standardized Needs To Himself With Such Conviction That He Drowns Out Any Desire For Alternatives, Much Less The Renunciation Of Need.

The Re-establishment Of An Ecological Balance Depends On The Ability Of Society To Counteract The Progressive Materialization Of Values. The Ecological Balance Cannot Be Re-established Unless We Recognize Again That Only Persons Have Ends And Only Persons Can Work Towards Them.

In Schools, Including Universities, Most Resources Are Spent To Purchase The Time And Motivation Of A Limited Number Of People To Take Up Predetermined Problems In A Ritually Defined Setting. The Most Radical Alternative To School Would Be A Network Or Service Which Gave Each Man The Same Opportunity To Share His Current Concern With Others Motivated By The Same Concern.

Learning From Programmed Information Always Hides Reality Behind A Screen.

The Knowledge Of The Individual Citizen Is Of Less Value Than The Knowledge Of Science. The Former Is The Opinion Of Individuals. It Is Merely Subjective And Is Excluded From Policies. The Latter Is Objective - Defined By Science And Promulgated By Expert Spokesmen. This Objective Knowledge Is Viewed As A Commodity Which Can Be Refined... And Fed Into A Process, Now Called Decision-making. This New Mythology Of Governance By The Manipulation Of Knowledge-stock Inevitably Erodes Reliance On Government By People.

At The Moment Of Death I Hope To Be Surprised.

School Is The Advertising Agency Which Makes You Believe That You Need The Society As It Is.

We Cannot Go Beyond The Consumer Society Unless We First Understand That Obligatory Public Schools Inevitably Reproduce Such A Society, No Matter What Is Taught In Them.

School Has Become The World Religion Of A Modernized Proletariat, And Makes Futile Promises Of Salvation To The Poor Of The Technological Age.

World Religions

School Prepares For The Alienating Institutionalization Of Life By Teaching The Need To Be Taught.

In A Consumer Society There Are Inevitably Two Kinds Of Slaves: The Prisoners Of Addiction And The Prisoners Of Envy.

School Is An Institution Built On The Axiom That Learning Is The Result Of Teaching. And Institutional Wisdom Continues To Accept This Axiom, Despite Overwhelming Evidence To The Contrary.

There Is No Greater Distance Than That Between A Man In Prayer And God

It Is Really An Alienation To Believe That Learning Is The Result Of Teaching.

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We Can Only Live The Changes We Wish To See: We Cannot Think Our Way To Humanity. Every One Of Us, Every Group, Must Become The Model Of That Which We Desire To Create. We Must Break The Obsolete Social And Economic Systems That Divide The World Between The Over-privileged And The Under-privileged. Each Of Us, Whether Government Leader Or Protester, Business Executive Or Worker, Professor Or Student, Share A Common Guilt.

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The New Experience That Has Replaced Dignified Suffering Is Artificially Prolonged, Opaque, Depersonalized Maintenance.

New Experiences

The Bicycle Is The Perfect Transducer To Match Man's Metabolic Energy To The Impedance Of Locomotion. Equipped With This Tool, Man Outstrips The Efficiency Of Not Only All Machines But All Other Animals As Well.

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Economic Inequality

People Need New Tools To Work With Rather Than New Tools That Work For Them.

Carry A Candle In The Dark, Be A Candle In The Dark, Know That You're A Flame In The Dark.

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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.

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.

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The Myth Of Unending Consumption Has Taken The Place Of The Belief In Life Everlasting.

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Together We Have Come To Realize That For Most Men The Right To Learn Is Curtailed By The Obligation To Attend School.

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The Public School Has Become The Established Church Of Secular Society.

Secular Society

Latin America Can No Longer Tolerate Being A Haven For United States Liberals Who Cannot Make Their Point At Home, An Outlet For Apostles Too "apostolic" To Find Their Vocation As Competent Professionals Within Their Own Community. The Hardware Salesman Threatens To Dump Second-rate Imitations Of Parishes, Schools And Catechisms -- Out-moded Even In The United States -- All Around The Continent. The Traveling Escapist Threatens Further To Confuse A Foreign World With His Superficial Protests, Which Are Not Viable Even At Home.

Exporting Church Employees To Latin America Masks A Universal And Unconscious Fear Of A New Church. North And South American Authorities, Differently Motivated But Equally Fearful, Become Accomplices In Maintaining A Clerical And Irrelevant Church. Sacralizing Employees And Property, This Church Becomes Progressively More Blind To The Possibilities Of Sacralizing Person And Community.

Neither Revolution Nor Reformation Can Ultimately Change A Society, Rather You Must Tell A New Powerful Tale, One So Persuasive That It Sweeps Away The Old Myths And Becomes The Preferred Story, One So Inclusive That It Gathers All The Bits Of Our Past And Our Present Into A Coherent Whole, One That Even Shines Some Light Into The Future So That We Can Take The Next Step… If You Want To Change A Society, Then You Have To Tell An Alternative Story.

The State Shall Make No Law With Respect To The Establishment Of Education.

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If You Want To Change Society Then You Must Tell An Alternative Story.

I Believe That A Desirable Future Depends On Our Deliberately Choosing A Life Of Action Over A Life Of Consumption, On Our Engendering A Lifestyle Which Will Enable Us To Be Spontaneous, Independent, Yet Related To Each Other, Rather Than Maintaining A Lifestyle Which Only Allows To Make And Unmake, Produce And Consume - A Style Of Life Which Is Merely A Way Station On The Road To The Depletion And Pollution Of The Environment. The Future Depends More Upon Our Choice Of Institutions Which Support A Life Of Action Than On Our Developing New Ideologies And Technologies.

We Have Failed...through Our Lack Of Responsible Awareness...and Thus Added To Suffering Around The World. All Of Us Are Cripples-some Physically, Some Mentally, Some Emotionally. We Must, Therefore, Strive Cooperatively To Create A New World. There Is No Time Left For Destruction, For Hatred, For Anger. We Must Build, In Hope And Joy And Celebration.

Leadership Does Not Depend On Being Right.

We Can Only Live Changes: We Cannot Think Our Way To Humanity. Every One Of Us, Every Group, Must Become The Model Of That Which We Desire To Create.

In Both Rich And Poor Nations Consumption Is Polarized While Expectation Is Equalized.

Culture Makes Pain Tolerable By Interpreting It's Necessity; Only Pain Perceived As Curable Is Intolerable.

A Low-energy Policy Allows For A Wide Choice Of Life-styles And Cultures. If, On The Other Hand, A Society Opts For High Energy Consumption, Its Social Relations Must Be Dictated By Technocracy And Will Be Equally Degrading Whether Labeled Capitalist Or Socialist.

The More Time, Toil, And Sacrifice Spent By A Population In Producing Medicine As A Commodity, The Larger Will Be The By-product, Namely, The Fallacy That Society Has A Supply Of Health Locked Away Which Can Be Mined And Marketed.

The Medical Establishment Has Become The Major Threat To Health.

Schools Are Designed On The Assumption That There Is A Secret To Everything In Life; That The Quality Of Life Depends Upon Knowing That Secret; That Secrets Can Only Be Known In Orderly Successions; And That Only Teachers Can Properly Reveal These Secrets. An Individual With A Schooled Mind Conceives Of The World As A Pyramid Of Classified Packages Accessible Only To Those Who Carry The Proper Tags.

Most Learning Is Not The Result Of Instruction. It Is Rather The Result Of Unhampered Participation In A Meaningful Setting. Most People Learn Best By Being "with It," Yet School Makes Them Identify Their Personal, Cognitive Growth With Elaborate Planning And Manipulation.

The True Miracle Of Modern Medicine Is Diabolical. It Consists In Making Not Only Individuals But Whole Populations Survive On Inhumanly Low Levels Of Personal Health.

Jesus Was An Anarchist Savior. That's What The Gospels Tell Us.

It Takes More Time And Effort And Delicacy To Learn The Silence Of A People Than To Learn Its Sounds. Some People Have A Special Gift For This. Perhaps This Explains Why Some Missionaries, Notwithstanding Their Efforts, Never Come To Speak Properly, To Communicate Delicately Through Silences. Although They "speak With The Accent Of Natives" They Remain Forever Thousands Of Miles Away. The Learning Of The Grammar Of Silence Is An Art Much More Difficult To Learn Than The Grammar Of Sounds.

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