Books

By David Ruenzel

DESCHOOLING OUR LIVES, edited by Matt Hern. (New Society Publishers, $14.95.) Because most of us talk about reforming schools as opposed to eliminating them, it is tempting to see "deschoolers"--a sobriquet derived from the title of Ivan Illich's 1970 manifesto, Deschooling Society--as members of a fringe movement. But the deschoolers' belief, rooted in the philosophy of Rousseau, that formal schooling undermines the radical potential of childhood and hence must be opposed, is far more pervasive than it appears. It thrives not only in certain independent schools and pockets of the burgeoning homeschooling movement but also in other "child centered" education movements, such as whole language and process learning. And as this collection of new essays demonstrates, the deschoolers are nothing if not child centered, insisting over and over again that children are innately curious and hence must be set free. Former middle school teacher Grace Llewellyn, whose popular Teenage Liberation Handbook is excerpted here, writes, "The ultimate goal of this book is for you to start associating the concept of freedom with you and for you to move out of the busy prison into the meadows of life." By the deschoolers' account, the only thing standing in kids' way of creative and productive endeavors are tyrannical adults, who represent, as editor Hern puts it, the "abject failure of monopoly schooling." Extrapolating on this view is former New York state teacher of the year John Gatto, who strives so hard to portray public school teachers as militaristic Prussians that we can practically picture them arriving in classrooms with iron crosses strapped around their necks. But if our schools are, as Gatto and other deschoolers like to argue, so determined to turn students into good little troopers, why haven't they been more successful? American kids tend to be more idle and aimless than slavishly obedient, indicating that public education's problems may have less to do with authority than with the sterile, institutional context in which the authority is exercised. Furthermore, there is something about the deschoolers' refrain that "children are curious" that gets curiouser and curiouser. Yes, of course, children are curious, but curiosity, as the saying goes, killed the cat. If children are, as the deschoolers rightly insist, as fully human as the rest of us, then they're also subject to unsavory temptations that can wreak havoc if left unchecked. One contributor, Aaron Falbel, argues that we should view "those who opt out of educational treatment" as "wise refuseniks, as conscientious objectors to a crippling and dehumanizing process." But many of these refuseniks are the kids lost in our streets and shopping malls, and to suggest that they need liberation as opposed to direction is to romanticize children to the...