Although not quite as vociferous as Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society, 1971), I am nonetheless a constant critic of what might be termed “traditional schooling”. Discipline, rigor, neat rows of desks, exams. You know the drill.

Over a number of years I’ve criticised my own traditional teaching practices in my talks on Free Learning. To illustrate my point, I’ve used a three-leaved Venn diagram outlining the interplay between  grade worship, conformity and dependence. Expanding on this line of thinking I’ve recently added a fourth leaf, delusion, which I’ve previously written about on this site. The result:

Is it any wonder that our school systems produce so many humans (and I include myself in this bracket) who struggle to live within the societies we are building?