When we talk about education, education is identified with the school. In other words, education is teaching that is held in schools as institutions for educating or teaching. So, this narrow perspective limits the educational process based on the time or period of education, educational environment and form of education.
As we all know, education is a humanizing process. Then, how can effective action make humans as humans should be? Is there a school we can make this happen?
As in the history of education, it is a process carried out in spare time. But nowadays education is not a process carried out in leisure time, in its history, education has also eliminated the holistic aspect of knowledge. so that knowledge is broken down into subjects, into credits, and so on. This has an effect that warns of capitalism's demand that science must be fragmented as the need for a differentiated labour force is needed for the bolts and parts of capitalism's engine to run.
This is what causes the modernization of the era so that education is reduced to the formal form of schools and teaching it has left its comprehension as a humanitarian process. When education has been reduced to schools and institutionalized and specialized in fields and departments, this will make it difficult for students and education personnel to understand human problems holistically.
This is reinforced by Ivan Illich's statement in the concept of his work, Deschooling Society (Society without Schools) can be seen as a comprehensive rejection of formal schools that suppress human freedom and development. He considered schools inadequate for the development of children and young people. Illich firmly believed that the goal of rejecting school in society would be to enable students to gain freedom in learning without having to fight for it from society. Everyone must be guaranteed a personality in learning, in the hope that he will accept the obligation to help others to grow according to his personality.
Illich ridicules those who say that it is only from school that knowledge and skills are obtained schools are not the only modern institutions with the primary aim of shaping the human view of reality. Hidden curriculum in family life, military service, health care and what is called professionalism or the media play an important role in the institutional manipulation of the human world, its vision, languages and needs.
Illich also reiterated that "schools are much more enslaving people in a more systematic way because only schools are considered capable of carrying out their main tasks, strangely schools perform these tasks by making understanding about themselves, about others and nature, become dependent in a process that has been formed in advance. So great is the influence of school on us that none of us can hope that he can be freed from it by something else.
It seems that education is meaningful if Ivan Illich's conception is realized. Imagine if there was a society where every day, without a rigid and formal school, anyone with more mature knowledge could become a teacher. Everyone can learn at any time and anywhere. It is like talking about the world of life, the nature that is going on with its contradictions, social problems and political problems that are happening. Of course, there will be many teachers for children, by gaining knowledge and exemplary whenever and wherever they are. So that education personnel will face friends who challenge them to reason, compete without being standardized with report cards, cooperate and so on.
This narrow perspective causes a limited educational process. So that it will bring bad effects of its education; First, because almost everyone considers education to be understood through school institutions, the formalistic way of thinking is embedded in people's thinking. In the end, parents see that their children's education can only be relied on from school. They see that school is the only place for their children to acquire knowledge and mental and character formation. The bad thing is that parents do not want to educate their children because they have already received education at school and do not care about their education outside of school. Second, schools are made the only legal institution for the community as a way of social mobility. As if it was standard that if you want to get a job you have to enter and graduate from school first, the formal requirement is to get a diploma. So, it is not surprising that many business certificates or education businesses do not involve the educated in the teaching and learning process. Even though formality is not the essence.
Therefore, the certificate or school output does not indicate quality. It is not uncommon for people to attend high-level schools, but have low intelligence, mentally damaged, stunted character, and corrupt souls. So that schools will give birth to human "dehumanism" who will rob the potential of human humanity.
Such an extreme view, which does not require schooling, of course, cannot be seen as pessimism but must be seen as a "criticism" of the world of education. This means that everyone must be able to get an education and be able to express their interests in the world of education. Education must belong to the community, without boundaries of class, race, religion, or physical forms of education for all.
It's a complex topic, I think there is some truth to what you are saying. The bigger and more institutionalized things get, the more they seem to resist change. As society changes and develops, people are growing up differently, and they have new sets of needs and difficulties to address.
Every single time, it is on their shoulders to develop what they would've wanted, but it's for their children who now need something else, right? We are set up to fail by the slow, archaic economic structures holding up progress in society.
It's not some kind of evil plot, but when money is being made for example by drilling oil, you will start to make schools teach kids how to drill oil. Fifty years down the line, oil is becoming outdated, but your financial department says it would cost more to stop drilling than it would to lobby congress to let you renew your contract another decade. And while we're drilling, we may as well keep teaching kids how to drill, right?
This is an over-simplification, but I hope you understand my meaning.