Quote:
Originally posted by maxjohan
A critique of the process of institutionalization. Modern societies appear to create more and more institutions - and great swathes of the way we live our lives become institutionalized. 'This process undermines people - it diminishes their confidence in themselves, and in their capacity to solve problems... It kills convivial relationships. Finally it colonizes life like a parasite or a cancer that kills creativity' (Finger and Asún 2001: 10).
Good stuff, I like it A LOT 
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I started a thread on Illichs 1 year anniversary of his death.
His words are great.
"Schooling - the production of knowledge, the marketing of knowledge, which is what the school amounts to, draws society into the trap of thinking that knowledge is hygienic, pure, respectable, deodorized, produced by human heads and amassed in stock..... [B]y making school compulsory, [people] are schooled to believe that the self-taught individual is to be discriminated against; that learning and the growth of cognitive capacity, require a process of consumption of services presented in an industrial, a planned, a professional form;... that learning is a thing rather than an activity. A thing that can be amassed and measured, the possession of which is a measure of the productivity of the individual within the society. That is, of his social value.
(quoted by Gajardo 1994: 715) "