By Charles De Raedt

There is a parable in the Christian Bibles about two men who each built a house. One built his on a solid foundation and the other did not. The house built on rock withstood the storm in the parable and that built on sand collapsed. The man-made structure that housed the nuclear society of the former man’s family was erected on a proper foundation and was thus able to weather the elements. Another construct of man, society, must then also be built on proper foundations. Education, being an indispensable foundation of society, is then logically one of the elements of the good foundation upon which a good society can be raised.

Philosophers, theorists and activists, three of whom will be discussed in this paper, namely, Karl Marx, Ivan Illich and A.S. Neill blame both individual and societal problems on poor and incorrect education supplied by a faulty educational system (Marx and Engels, 2005; Illich, 1970; Suissa, 2005). These three thinkers were chosen, as will be shown in the discussion, for their advocacy of Anarchistic forms of organization and education. Each was well respected in his accomplishments and though each had their critics, the contributions that they made have helped to shape and still continue to influence society today. All three realized the necessity of proper education in the establishment and proper functioning of a good society.

According to Marx, the masses must be educated for them to be able to realize their personal worth and their importance to the economic stability of their society. This process is necessary for the proletarian revolution that will overthrow capitalism, end oppression by the privileged classes, disestablish the social structure that propagates the rule of the minority elite and establish a rule of the majority--self-governance of the people. Without digressing into another essay topic it seems to be that Communism is much more democratic than its detractors may want us to perceive it. In fact, in Marx’s original writings, those unadulterated by others of the time who called themselves Communists and Anarchists but whose ideas differed noticeably from Marx’s, his idea of the smallest, and autonomous social unit, the commune was essentially what the ancient Greeks, the originators of democracy, and Haldane, in agreement with the idea of the Greeks in On Being the Right Size, was an example of a true democracy (Marx and Engels, 2005; Haldane, 1963; Rubel, 1973). It was the ignorance of the working class of the fact that without their labor Capitalism would collapse and education was the cure for this ignorance and the catalyst for the revolution that would establish a classless, self-governing society.

Illich used the paradigm of the educational system to argue that present hierarchical systems were at the root of the problems of society. Society as a whole needed to be disestablished so that it would not continue to improperly school its members. Rather than institutions and establishments imposing mis-education on students, Illich called for autonomous education sought out by the individual that should individualize and personalize each student’s educational and intellectual nourishment needs (Illich, 1970).

All these theories and practices are directed at the acquisition of knowledge by everyone according to their needs and, once knowledgeable about what they need to know, the desire to further their pursuit of education to their fulfillment. With the destruction of limitations on education, faulty educational traditions and institutions that hinder education—without education being controlled in and dictated by those in power in a hierarchy--comes the destruction of ignorance.

The absence of a hierarchy, established levels of leadership and authority over individuals and groups in society is an Anarchy. The very word stirs up images of terror, violence, unrest and chaos. In fact, the Encarta Encyclopedia (2007) defines it as a “chaotic situation”, “a situation in which there is a total lack of organization or control”. And when looking at the synonyms from the thesaurus, these are the words given: disorder, chaos, lawlessness, revolution, mayhem, rebellion, and its antonym is given as: order. The root word of Anarchy is archy which means government (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2009). Simply put, an Anarchy is a society without a government. There is no lexical or logical reason to call it any of the synonyms listed above and it certainly does not mean an absence of order. Charles Darwin stated in The Origin of the Species that humans would not have evolved without some sort of self governance and sense of preservation of their species and scholars contend that this prevents an Anarchical society from descending into chaos (Suissa, 2005). Society will always have “self-control” even though there is an absence of government. It is this control that forms the foundation of a stable Anarchistic society whether it be a communist village, an Illichian educational web or the Summerhill School. The term used in this paper is Conscientious Anarchy.

Among the three people mentioned above Neill was the most active in implementing change in education. He founded the Summerhill School in 1921 as a proving ground for his educational philosophy and to test his theories of democratic (also termed “free”) education (Readhead & da Silva, 2008). He believed that the traditional structure of education founded on traditional societal values was oppressive and wrong. Summerhill has been called an Anarchistic school (Suissa, 2005; Gribble, 1998) and functions as a Conscientious Anarchy. The school calls itself a democracy and it is true that elections are held and that everyone’s vote from a four year old student to a 40 year old teacher carries equal weight (and the students outnumber the teachers by about 10:1) but even if there was a rule decided by democratic vote there is no body that enforces that rule. The majority constantly decides that there are to be classes for all students, yet many students choose not to attend class and are not expelled. Although most students, after being given time to adjust, come around and begin the learning process (Readhead & da Silva, 2008).

Critics of Summerhill say that without strictly enforced rules no student will ever study, much less graduate, however, the graduation rate of Summerhill is 84% and many of the graduates go on to university and have become doctors, lawyers, engineers and other highly successful professionals. As of the 2007 Ofsted report Summerhill satisfactorily met the U.K. government’s standards for an educational institution (McCarthy, 2007). Neill’s experiment in Anarchy is a success.

Marx, although never a part of any physical revolution, supplied the ideological basis for 19th and 20th century Communist revolutions, the most well known being the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Part of Marx’s philosophy was that universal education was a prerequisite for the eventual revolution that would overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie and install “the rule of the proletariat”. In his writings, including the Communist Manifesto, he advocated the control of individual and autonomous communes by their members—all together comprising a stateless society (Rubel, 1973). He advocated Conscientious Anarchy.

In De-schooling Society, Illich used the educational system as a paradigm for exposing his ideas that society as a whole needed to be disestablished so that it would not continue to improperly school its members. Rather than institutions and establishments imposing mis-education on students, Illich called for autonomous education sought out by the individual that should individualize each student’s educational needs (Illich, 1970).

What ties these three thinkers’ approaches to education together is the underlying opposition to a governing body that remotely controls and dictates the educational needs, qualifications and direction as well as the quantity and quality of each. Only Marx used universal education provided to everyone, but as a stepping stone to a collective of autonomous communes that would undertake the education of themselves and their progeny independent of any form of centralized government. Neill still functioned under the educational laws of the U.K. however he broke every conceivable convention that a British boarding school would have. Students could not be reprimanded for having sex on school grounds. They might be spoken to later by a teacher, and the teacher would advise them of teenage pregnancy and to exercise precaution by using contraception, but they would certainly not be expelled or, as was the case early last century, beaten for breaking what many consider to be a sacred law above laws of the school or state.

Ivan Illich went the furthest with his theory about destructuralization. De-schooling Society used educational institutions and the governments that ruled them as a paradigm for a much larger argument. He believed that the whole system must be de-systematized.

The fact is our educational systems do not work. If our educational foundation was good and if it has been good for any length of time we would have built our house of society upon rock and it would be a good society. It isn’t.

None of the three thinkers discussed believe they do and Illich goes several steps further to say that none of the foundations of society work. In the educational paradigm alone he writes
The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value (Illich, 1970).

As for society in general, he states that what we consider health care, community improvement, safety, national security and productive work are nothing more than mistaken identities for medical treatment, social work, police protection, military strength and the rat race. “Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.” (Illich, 1970)

Returning to the paradigm of education, what is being said here is that now, improvements in education follow a process that goes more or less along these steps:

1) Society makes requests, or law makers lobby for improved education
2) The political process begins, takes its time and if it ends in a positive response,
3) Budget allocations and/or laws are passed and control over this new money or power is given over to the educational institutions.
4) The quality of education remains the same.

In step one, lawmakers have their agendas which do not necessarily mean that they honestly intend to improve education and, for the most part, the leaders of society now are the products of past mis-education. Thus, from the beginning, the process is flawed. And then we have a political process following where numerous and multifarious riders are attached to bills before they are passed into laws that hardly reflect the intent of their instigators—their ideas already being flawed. Next, if a budget is allocated or if a new law is passed, the power does not go into the hands of the people but the multi-billion Peso institution that is government and the private education sector, which are businesses run for profit. And the net result is no change, or at worst, change for the worse. What will happen when the law is implemented changing the term for an undergraduate degree from four years to five? Will graduates have learned anything more, because, gauging from what they know now a 20% increase in time spent in school systems that are already proven ineffective by virtue of the fact that they need to be modified would not make a difference. And would this make them more employable, or create more jobs for them to find when they do graduate? No.

If we followed any of our three thinkers’ philosophies we may get a process that looks like this:

1) Individuals or autonomous groups decide what their educational needs are as well as what they would like to learn.
2) Individuals seek tutelage from scholars in their community and groups pass on knowledge to the generation that will take over operation of the commune, including everything learned from past experience that might change traditional methods that no longer work.
3) Unskilled or partially educated labor is exchanged for tuition.
4) A new generation of well educated students emerges who were never forced to finish their education nor wait to complete it in a certain period of time.

True, this is a simple plan and may seem like a simplistic approach. What makes it good, however is that it is not a re-hash of the approaches to “improving education” that have been implemented for decades. In the example of the institution of the general education program which fills undergraduate students’ time for almost two years, from the first batch that graduated to the batches we see graduating now how many citizens do we see with well rounded personalities, having well rounded conversations in coffee shops about well rounded topics that will help to create a better and more well rounded society? I never see any. I myself dropped out of university for ten years because of boredom with the GE curriculum. Any student motivated to learn will acquire this knowledge on their own. And if they do not then do not hire them to do work for you. There’s a simplistic approach for you.

A.S. Neill said that it was the student’s prerogative whether or not to educate himself. He opened a school where students could start learning any time they wanted—or leave without learning anything. His school has produced students who graduated with well-respected degrees. Who would have thought that your family physician, possibly someone who had a part in saving you or your child’s life spent half her years in high school, smoking, drinking and having sex in the bushes behind the school?

A student with Illichian motives will seek out education even if it is not offered on a silver platter, albeit a tarnished platter that costs much more than it is worth. And, as shown by the ancient Greeks and proven by Haldane using mathematics, a Marxist commune is one the most true and pure forms of democracy.

Ignorance needs to be destroyed if our society is to survive. The seeds of good education must be sown to make that society thrive. Oppressive governments and institutions have not succeeded. It is time to end their rule. Anarchy’s true definition must be understood and its philosophy implemented. It is freedom. It is the same freedom to shout fire in a democratic state without the fear of the jackboot in your face—but you cannot shout fire if there is none or soon society will throw you out and support you no longer just as the boy who cried wolf too many times. Animal societies, who have no government function effectively in this state of Anarchy. They are conscientious of the common good and are ruled by the consensus. Social scientists define revolution as the disassembly of the old structure. When we revolutionize the bad and replace it with the good, let us not forget to lay down that rock foundation which is Proper Education.

REFERENCES

Encarta Encyclopedia. (2007). Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. Microsoft Corporation.
Gribble, D. (1998). Anarchistic Education: It's happening all over the world. Retrieved May 10, 2009, from Ratville Times/Freedom Press: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/Summerhill.html
Haldane, J. (1963). On being the right size. Gateway to the great books . Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Illich, I. (1970). Why We Must Disestablish School. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/chap1.html
Karl Marx, F. E. (2005). The communist manifesto. Project Gutenberg.
McCarthy, D. (2007). Ofsted Inspection Report: Summerhill School, 6-7 November 2007. Retrieved February 13, 2009, from http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxedu_reports/download/(id)/90088/(as)/124870_301621.pdf
Readhead, Z., & da Silva, A. (2008). Summerhill School. Retrieved May 10, 2009, from http://www.histedbr.fae.unicamp.br/revista/edicoes/30/art01_30.pdf
Rubel, M. (1973). Marx, theoretician of anarchism. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://libcom.org/library/marx-theoretician-anarchism
Suissa, J. (2005). Anarchy in the classroom. The New Humanist , 120 (5).
Wiley Publishing, Inc. (2009, ). Tending to Root Words. Retrieved May 21, 2009, from Dummies.com: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/tending-to-word-roots.html

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Best Wishes

Andy

Your Hypnotist