The deschooling argument, as being put forward so forcibly today by Illich, Reimer, and others, is not new. One person who has proposed a similar case is D. H. Lawrence. His proposal is attended to here, not so much because of its placement in history, but because of the important nature of the arguments which support it. Lawrence, at the beginning of the universal compulsory schooling movement, foresaw problems and dangers which others, with half a century's hindsight, are only beginning to focus on.
References
1.
Phoenix. London: Heinemann, 1961, 600.
2.
Phoenix II. London: Heinemann, 1968, 578.
3.
The Lost Girl. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, 1966, 265.
4.
Phoenix II, 580.
5.
Phoenix II, 579.
6.
Phoenix II, 581.
7.
Phoenix II, 586; italics added, except for “impossible.”
8.
The whole issue here becomes a vicious circle since results gained at school are largely contingent on the pupil's familial social status. See Bowles, S. Unequal education and the reproduction of the social division of labour, Review of Radical Political Economics, 1971, III, 1–30; among others.
9.
In his overall writings he argued the case against the schools more forcibly and far more often than he ventured to articulate the basic deschooling thesis itself.
10.
Phoenix II, 581.
11.
Fantasia of the Unconscious. London: Heinemann, 1961, 77–8.
