Ivan Illich on School and Self-Directed Learning

"We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison." John Taylor Gatto

"The well-known school critic and teacher John Taylor Gatto identifies seven lessons as the real teachings of school: Confusing the student Awakening class consciousness Teaching indifference Creating intellectual and emotional dependence Weakening self-confidence and Accustoming students to constant supervision. "School condemns most people to being lowly building blocks in a pyramidal social model. In collaboration with television, schooling robs children of the time they need to develop a unique personality, thereby preventing them from growing up. School has replaced the ‘family curriculum’ with the components of privacy, independence, and social life. In its place has come the factory school, a prison for children's souls that fragments social relationships into networks and cannot be survived without damage." "It replaces the intellectual growth of children with the violent creation of subjects. It kills the curiosity of its subjects, places them in a dense fog of confusion from which many will never be able to free themselves in their entire lives, it blocks their path to individual freedom and denies them the fulfillment that comes with a free spirit."" John Taylor Gatto