• DOI:10.1007/BF02195145
• Corpus ID: 143813429

Ivan Illich

@article{Gajardo1993IvanI,
  title={Ivan Illich},
  author={Marcela Gajardo},
  journal={Prospects},
  year={1993},
  volume={23},
  pages={711-720}
}

• M. Gajardo
• Published 1 September 1993
• Education
• Prospects

To write a profile of an educator like Ivan Illich is not an easy task. Here, first of all, is a thinker set in a specific historical context—that of the 1960s—a period characterized by radical criticism of capitalist society and its institutions, among them the school. Furthermore, the personality we are dealing with is a complex one. In those years it was said of Ivan Illich that he was an intelligent man who liked to surround himself with gifted people and did not suffer fools gladly. He could be the most cordial of men, but was also capable of the most devastating ridicule of those who questioned his ideas. He was an indefatigable worker and a multilingual, cosmopolitan man whose ideas, whether on the Church and its reform, culture and education, medicine or transport in modern societies ignited controversies that made him one of the outstanding figures of our time. But those controversies were also triggered partly by Illich himself: by his personality, his style, his working methods and the radical nature of his ideas. For educators, in fact, Ivan Illich, once a priest, is the father of ́deschooled’ education, the writer who condemns out of hand the school system and the schools, excoriating them, along with many other public institutions, for exercising anachronistic functions that fail to keep pace with change, serving only to maintain the status quo and protect the structure of the society that produced them.