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As a teacher in a system outside the US what Illich offers here resonates with me. In my system there is a significant amount of “doublespeak” where talk of school autonomy is overlaid with centralist policies and curriculum which defeats the purpose of autonomy in the first place. While parts of me struggle to accept it the fact is that students are being “dumbed down” by curriculum centred around standardised testing. This means that truly creative and divergent thinkers can’t be catered for within the curriculum and we are now more about creating “factors of production” (labour units) than about creating whole people who can think in a number of different frames.
To be fair though, school systems in the West are buckling under the pressure of globalisation to create an efficient workforce so that living standards can be maintained in the face of economic growth in developing countries. To go to a more non standardised model of education would definitely be a high risk, high return scenario for governments in Western countries..

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