Ivan Illich is a controversial writer that I was not previously familiar with.

In education, Illich is most famous for Deschooling Society.

Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education—and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.

Illich wrote this in 1971, mind you. Unsurprisingly, education researchers are still engaging with Illich’s arguments today.

Doroudi and Ahmad’s 2023 Learning @ Scale paper “The Relevance of Ivan Illich’s Learning Webs 50 Years On” focuses on Illich’s concept of learning webs.

Illich argues that there are four distinct “learning channels” that can be supported by “networks”:

  • Things — “Basic resources for learning.”
  • Models — “A person who possesses a skill and is willing to demonstrate its practice.”
  • Peers — People with shared educational goals.
  • Elders — “Men with practical wisdom who would be willing to sustain the newcomer in his educational adventure.”

Illich proposes four networking approaches for students to gain access to those channels:

  1. Reference Services to Educational Objects — Places for students to have access to things, including libraries, laboratories, and museums but also workplace objects “made available to students as apprentices or on off hours”.
  2. Skill Exchanges — A directory listing of people including (a) their skills and (b) “the conditions under which they are willing to serve as models for others who want to learn these skills”.
  3. Peer-Matching — A forum for describing a learning activity and finding a “partner for the inquiry”.
  4. Reference Services to Educators-at-large — A directory of professionals with “conditions of access to their services”.

Certainly, it’s easy to think of example education and social technologies that have incorporated these approaches. I’m a big fan of peer matching technologies, for example. Doroudi and Ahmad list several examples.

Illich imagines that the existence of these networks would faciliate a “web” of learning in the place of a formal schooling system.

If the networks I have described could emerge, the educational path of each student would be his own to follow, and only in retrospect would it take on the features of a recognizable program.

I can imagine why this was so controversial! Check out Doroudi and Ahmad’s paper for useful discussion of how these ideas are relevant in the contemporary world of education technology and the design tensions they highlight. They conclude:

We suspect one reason for Illich’s work being ignored is because it is radically controversial; almost anyone who reads his vision is sure to disagree with some of it. But we do not think that is reason not to engage with Illich’s views. Even if we disagree with Illich’s conclusions, we can benefit from the process by which he reaches them, the passion with which he sets them forth, and the insights they provide for how to make learning available to all.

Further reading: