ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the general features of Iván Illich’s thinking on education and social transformation. It starts with the arguments from which he concluded that school as we know it, compulsory schooling, will never achieve emancipatory or revolutionary aims; on the contrary, it contributes decisively to the perpetuation of an economic and social model that only foments violence. The text moves on to the tools which would allow the dismantling of compulsory schooling, or the “deschooling” of society, which comes to the same thing. And it concludes by noting the difficulties facing any initiative that seeks to deschool society, reinforcing the idea that compulsory schooling, regardless of the political colour of the government of the day, can never have liberating or emancipatory aims.
