A while ago, I spoke with a friend of Ivan Illich who shared a brief anecdote that has stayed with me. The two were taking a walk in between sessions of a conference on education. The friend was a life-long educator. Illich was famously critical of how we do schooling. 1/x
As they talked, Illich asked "Why do we think we need to be educated?" The friend presumed Illich was narrowly referring to his usual target, modern compulsory schooling. But he wasn't. 2/x
He meant the question as broadly as it sounded. Why do we think we need to be educated at all?
Maybe that question seems absurd or even perverse. The friend told me that he's continued to think about it for the last twenty years. 3/x
Maybe that question seems absurd or even perverse. The friend told me that he's continued to think about it for the last twenty years. 3/x
I've continued to think about it, too. And it's been good for me to think about it rather than presume that I know the answer or that the question is not worth asking. 4/x
It's encouraged the habit of asking and entertaining other questions that, at first glance, may seems just as crazy? Why do I value convenience? What's the point of saving time? Why should I be productive? Maybe you would have an altogether different set of questions. 5/x
The point is that our lives are structured by a host of unquestioned assumptions, or as Illich sometimes called them, "certainties." And that these certainties, never questioned, lock us unwittingly into the status quo, however frustrating it may be. 6/x
Maybe that is a banal point, but even if we assent to it in principle, the power of the certainties is such that mere assent changes little. The seemingly absurd question, however, might just trouble us into the kind of thinking that makes a difference. 7/7
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