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.

Ivan Illich

Categorized in : School People Teaching

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.

Ivan Illich

powerful light past

We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation.

Ivan Illich

difficult-times hope expectations

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.

Ivan Illich

humanity desire thinking

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

Ivan Illich

learning education believe

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.

Ivan Illich

population medicine miracle

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.

Ivan Illich

productive-work military race

The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.

Ivan Illich

unending taken belief

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.

Ivan Illich

independent technology believe

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.

Ivan Illich

ignorant desire needs

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 Illich

doctors health humorous

School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.

Ivan Illich

world-religions promise school

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.

Ivan Illich

cycling animal men

Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.

Ivan Illich

rich-countries country school

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.

Ivan Illich

hatred suffering joy

Effective health care depends on self-care; this fact is currently heralded as if it were a discovery.

Ivan Illich

care self discovery

Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.

Ivan Illich

anarchism anarchist jesus

The public school has become the established church of secular society.

Ivan Illich

secular-society education school

Schools teach the need to be taught.

Ivan Illich

taught school needs

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.

Ivan Illich

acceptance attitude believe

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.

Ivan Illich

pyramids teacher school