Illich's goal was society not schools. He saw schools as perpetuating the status quo. This, and his other books, promotied living a convivial life. This is, one in harmonious collaboation with other people. Schooling, whether state, free, or home schooling, removes young peole from their families, their community, society and nature. Illich was for living convivially and simply in the "vernacular." That is with friends, community and the actual world that surrounds you and with the natural abilities with which you are endowed.
That is the kind of life promoted today by the book "Creating Learning Communities," Ron Miller, ed.

....and the 'Important People' of the world refuse to listen to you, you *must* be telling the truth.

Illich died this month. Maybe someone will come along and champion some of his many ideas and causes. But some of the things he has been talking about--the structuring of education in this world is ineffective for actual learning, but is designed for the maintaining of class strata, and that the rich gets the best schooling because they pay for it (not saying that they are exceptionally talented or intellectual or anything more than mediocre) has been debated for years and will be debated for years. Subtexted to his arguments is that the rich needs the poor to help define themselves. And any time 'the institution'
gets fired up about improving the conditions for the mass culture, it end up achieving the opposite effect, as the reviewer below noted. To me, this is reminescent of those two dystopia novels we were forced to read in high school, "1984" and "Brave New World" (somewhere there's a great irony in my feeling this way).

Anyway, Illich, even though he was an academician, became a great human rights advocate and champion of the poor and downtrodden all around the world. This great work of his should be read by anyone who believes in truth and freedom.

I read this book 10 years ago and still find myself thinking about it.

If you're looking for material that will justify your worst suspicions as to the actual effectiveness of modern schooling while inspiring in you a desire for change, you're on the right track. But be warned. This book is far more than an essay on the failings of our educational system.

Education is merely the author's proving ground for one simple premise: it is the nature of the institution to produce the opposite of itself. This basic paradigm may be applied to any institutionalized need. You'll find yourself analyzing the role of healthcare in well-being, financial services in prosperity, the food industry in nutrition, and so on...

Find this book and buy it.

"Leftists operate as industrial elitists and only serves big business with their social programs that insure the subordination of an underclass of consumers to keep the capital and mythical progressivism on motion"?? What are you smoking?!! Actually, many Marxists revere both Illich and Fromm. We currently live in a world marred by global finance-capital impoverishing and destroying the well-being of millions for the mega-profits of a few, and industrial realities play a key role in the problem... as well as the solution: its time for workers to harness for themselves what they create and have created for their own benefit locally and internationally. I really don't think a proper reading of "Tools for Conviviality" condradicts this.

I must agree with Tod's review. This text is a life changing elixir. I am not a social science major or even a major for that matter, I simply enjoy reading non-fiction books that interest me. As soon is I read into the meat of the manifesto I was amazed by how it was effecting my thoughts on capitalism and industrialization. Although there are no solutions in this text, the truths exposed by Illich's platonic inquiries are mind blowing. I have not had the pleasure of reading many books that have rendered my condition topsy-turvy, but this simply removed the wool from my eyes in one fell swoop. It is interesting that Ivan Ilich is not mentioned in any context by the left of the US of A. This only fortifies my opinion that our leftists operate as industrial elitists and only serves big business with their social programs that insure the subordination of an underclass of consumers to keep the capital and mythical progressivism on motion. Sorry for the tangent. I was pleased to find a number of sites that do mention Ilich.

I can't say enough about the importance of this book. In short, Illich makes the point that there is a way in which the so-called "Third World" countries can avoid industrialization, and move directly into the post-industrialist state that the developed world is headed. There is no doubt in my mind that we will look back on this man's work sometime in the near future and realize how amazingly right he is. It is really a shame that he does not have more of an influence than he does. Some of the points in this book are so right that they seem impossible to refute or even question. I really can't even put into words the influence that the book has had on me. It is something everyone should read, and it's short enough that it can be done in a matter of a few hours. Please feel free to e-mail me and tell me what you thought of it, or of other works by this genius as I am going to work on trying to popularize and spread his ideas.

David Gabbard touches the heart of the matter involving Ivan Illich. He gives the reader insight to a side of Illich not discussed previously. A definite read for all those who are interested in a historical and genealogical synopsis of Illich.

Professor Gabbard truly writes and enticing and intriging book about Ivan Illich. He illustrates beautifully why society has downplayed the work of Ivan Illich.

Is it true that the first Spanish grammar was intended as an agent of state control? Is it true that all writing up until Aquinas was dictation plucked from the air, without opportunity or perceived need for revision? Is it true that the priest reading the written Latin words in Spain, France, Burgundy and throughout Europe pronounced the words in a way that the worshippers understood? I don't know if these and other surprising assertions in the book are true, but having believed them I have found that this book has had a transformative effect on my experience of worship, language and oratory. I hightly recommend this book to priests, educators, and language professionals, and to any one interested in Christianity, language and schooling.

The trouble with this book is that it makes you rethink your whole reason for being! It is an insightful review of how professions have incapacitated the people and issues they set out to help. It focused on medicine, law and the helping professions but is relevant to all of us. It makes you think - am I creating a reason for being? should I be really working myself out of a job? Empowering for those who feel they MUST employ a professional for all things - think again.

In this book, much like Deschooling Society, Illich attacks the issue from all sides. He consistenly provides an excellent argument with examples, statistics, and well-done research. Though this book is not quite as fast-paced as Deschooling Society, it is equally engaging. Illich not only presents the problems in a realistic way, he also presents alternative methods for dealing with the issues he's attacking. This book is well worth the time it takes to read, and although it was written several years ago, the issues addressed in this book are even more prevalent now. Illich is a wonderful writer and this is an incredible book.

Shake out old notions of how things must be done. The main value of this book is that it shows there is another way. Children don't have to go to school. In fact, the world may become a much better place if they don't.

After reading this book for the big picture, go read John Holt (Teach Your Own, How Children Learn, Learning All The Time) to see how the details can fit in.

This is one of those books that will change the way you see the world and yourself. It's difficult for us who were "successful" in government schools to look back at the process objectively, to remember the wasted time, the cartoonish simplification of everything, and the process' lack of applicability to our lives. You may need this book to help you reconsider that which has become so large a part of your own feeling of self-worth. You will then see why it is almost impossible to discuss true school reform with people - they still have their blinders on.

Illich is faced with a problem. He deplores modern civilization as dehumanizing but recognizes only subsstence existence as an alternative. Unfortunately subsistence existence and other historically based cultures prensent strongly based sex roles. This flies in the face of feminism which denies the value of culurally defined sex roles and thus denies the values of Illich's ideal culture. Since feminism is a powerful political force, Illich must find a way to make his views compatible with it.

Illich overcomes this by defining modern sexual roles as sexist but historical cultural roles as gendered This is the book. He overcomes the challenge to his ideal by a linguistic definition. His history of social roles is spotty and biased to prove his point.

The book is a sophistic muddle. Mnay many better books that the social history of the home are available.

The reviewer who criticized Illich for not making his views compatible with feminism either has an agenda or misses his point. Yes Illich has a deep suspicion of modernity--and feminism is the defining discourse of modernity )or post modernity or whatever). Illich rejects a society in which everyone is a player--a geographic isolate in favor of something John Crowe Ransom and the Agrarians would have admired. Read the Odyssey for example: it is among other things a rule book of civility and societal harmony (and its enemies). The greatest scandal of present day academia and its cousins in the medea is its historical amnesia. Maybe traditional society has something to offer us (and I am curious to know what the reviewer thinks will happen when bacteria become resistant to all antibiotics) It is after all globalism starting from WWI hich has brought us pandemics of flu, aids and diseases yet unknown. The 19199 flue pandemic killed as many people as the plague of 1348. Hey I don't see that we've come that far.

Illich makes what would otherwise be dry reading into an emotional and thought-provoking journey. He has great perception to see interactions in society. Every moment I spent reading it was worthwhile. Just as much fun was deconstructing his arguments to see how he reached the conclusions and deciding whether I agree. I am eager to read "Tools for Conviviality."

Illich proposes that sometime in the last 50 years society passed through a threshold where "modernized subsistence" was achieved and all our modern real needs were met. At this point we reached the maximum, and coincidently the ideal level, of individual satisfaction through a balance of autonomous action and consumption of mass-produced commodities (goods and services primarily in medical, transportation and educational areas). But then society passed through this threshold and, as a result individuals have been experiencing lower and lower overall satisfaction with life with our ever increasing use of mass-produced commodities.

Illich argues that society would have stopped at the threshold value had there not been created at that moment the distorting force of the Dominant Professions. Dominant Professions that impel society to produce a surfeit of mass-produced commodities.

Dominant Professions are a professional class with the power to impute the need for unneeded commodities upon the citizenry. By using the language of the Professional, they trick us laymen to go beyond our real needs by creating in us needs that we would not otherwise have - imputed needs. They do this for the sake of sustaining and furthering their authority and profession and in the service of the people who control the tools of mass production. The Dominant Professionals not only control the distribution and supply of the approved commodity that satisfies our imputed need, they also make it illegal or impossible to satisfy our need using a non-approved commodity. The Professional's commodities are of course mass-produced. Thus, society has passed the threshold because of the Dominant Professions. To get back to that threshold value we need to dismantle the authority of the professional class.

Those are the arguments. The fun part is decomposing the arguments. Stop reading now if you want to figure it out for yourself without being biased by my analysis.

First, Illich imagines us a citizenry of such simpletons we can't determine how much we need to sustain ourselves in this late industrial society. By calling every need an "imputed need" if it is beyond "modernized subsistence", Illich can blame the Dominate Professionals for causing society to progress past where it would otherwise have stopped, fully satisfied. I disagree. It is the ever expanding desires of individuals that keep us wanting more long after we knowingly achieved subsistence. We are never satisfied enough to stop wanting more. These are not imputed needs from an external Professional class that we need to defend ourselves against, this is our own natural behavior which we chose not to rein in.

Illich also tells us that we know the maximum benefit to life that industry can ever provide. Fortunately, this is not true. For example, if average longevity hasn't changed during the past 50 years it doesn't follow that industry has been ineffective. This assumes a constant population base whereas the size of society is increasing and more people are living to about the same age. And there is ample evidence that the mass-produced commodities are the cause for improvement in life. Examples Illich sites in the book as examples of autonomous actions replaced by commodites that induce "modernized poverty" include; peasants living in homes they built from and upon the refuse of others moved to pre-fabricated houses, indoor light from fires and candles replaced with electricity, infant mortality reduced by the presence of trained physicians. Furthermore, individual human longevity is not limited by a theoretical physical law we know of in the same way the speed of light is. Thus, because the record has not been broken in the past 50 years it does not follow that it cannot be broken during the next 50 years. If we followed this logic long-jump competitions were no longer necessary after the 1968 Olympics.

Illich proposes that we are faced with a new choice - "modernized subsistence" - resulting from the invention of modern industrial capabilities. However, each age - in it's own time "modern" - stone, bronze, iron or last week in the post industrial age, the commodities that determined the maximum attainable life and the minimum amount of resources needed to stay alive, e.g. the subsistence level, were dependent on what was available. Because installation of a society-wide commodity will always impede the liberty of an individual to use another technology or no technology at all - whether it is the rules of the road, language, or inoculations, there is no non-zero level of commodity use required that will simultaneously preserve for every individual the liberty to act and the same objective measure of "modernized subsistence". Simply said - your actions count towards yourself and the whole.

Illich's asserts we know what "modernized subsistence" looks like from empirical observation. In fact, Illich gives his opinion of a current and real country that has at its disposal the appropriate intensity of production to approximate "modernized subsistence." Subsistence is a minimum level to support life. "Modernized Subsistence" supports "Convivial Austerity." What Illich proposes is his ideal society: his idea of the ideal life for the individual that alienates the liberties he cherishes least and mandates the commodities he values more.

Illich shows our beautiful tendency to romanticize the past; when it seemed that the world reached its apex coincidently with our arrival on the planet. Language was real, technology was benign, and people were pure until that moment when a kernel -born only in our consciousness - metastasized and corrupted the balance of powers that would have otherwise been. Reality is that language is always evolving, applied technology is never benign and people run the gamut from altruistic to evil. And this has always been the case. Illich's arguments and desires for a better world are wonderful food-for-thought. They also are unfortunately an impractical model for society.