Alternatives to formal compulsory schooling - Essay Example

As Illich claims, almost all high cost educational programs that launched in the US were failure. They could not make any notable improvement in the learning of the marginalized children. A comparison with their classmates who are from middle income families reveals that they have further fallen back. The reasons for the failure of such programs were that the allocated fund, though it seemed to be huge, was insufficient to improve the performance of children who outnumbered the amount. Moreover, the fund was not concentrated only on the poor children; the children from upper class also had a share from it.

In order to make such programs a success, the fund must be directed to the beneficiary, allowing them to buy their share to be utilized at their will. In the words of the writer, neither in North America nor in Latin America the poor get equality from universal education. One of the basic objectives of universal education is to provide a child with his social responsibilities. Even after being educated, the mindset of the people is not changed, so, the legacy of compulsory education must be questioned and judged severely.

Across the world, especially in the US, the school has an anti-educational effect on the society as the schools deviated from its basic cause for which they were set up. Nowadays, people regard education as very costly, very complex and an impossible affair due to the failures of the schools. The monopoly of imparting education is not bestowed only on schools, but schools discourage other institutions from assuming educational tasks. The Supreme Court Justice William Douglas opines that “the only way to establish an institution is to finance it” (Illich).

This is true in the case of schools that only by channeling dollar away from the parents the schools admit students. In the US, the per capita rate for a school has increased in such a way that for the past couple of years the rate of increase was unbearable. This phenomenon is apparent among the private schools and only rich parents can afford private education for their children. Thus, compulsory welfare may lead to further impoverishment. Obligated schooling divided the society and graded it according to an education based caste system.

Societies are considered as castes and distinction is made by the average years of schooling by the members. What is happening in the school is a person learns a given skill with the largest expenditure of public funds that too for the attainment of a diploma which has no relation to any useful skill or job. According to Illich, schools provide neither justice nor learning, because the educators are adamant on a package of instructions with certification. Schools provide links to one’s roles in the society, but fail to make them efficiently play their roles.

Aside from this, schools hold back instructions to those students whose every step in learning suits formerly approved measures of social control. Pupils are not given adequate opportunity for enhancing their skills with the help of a right teacher who can highly motivate them without the constraints of curriculum. Skill learning for inventive and creative behavior must be promoted by institutional arrangement, though they are often opposed nature. Schools are performing badly because they fail to distinguish between learning and education.

Schools confuse teaching with learning, education with grade advancement and fluency with the ability to speak