The right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school - Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich is well known for his book Deschooling Society which argued that the top-down management of schools makes students powerless - and that the same top-down management is typical of the modern, technological economy that prevents people from learning. His book Tools for Conviviality made the same criticism of technology generally.

Illich has a variety of works available on the web.  Here are some to get started.  

Books

• Deschooling Society: This book made Ivan Illich famous, arguing that schooling is a model of our centralized consumer society.
• You can download and read the book as a PDF here.
• Review of Deschooling Society.

• Tools for Conviviality: The entire text of another of Illich's most important works, the most general statement of his view about technology. This book helped found the radical technology movement of the 1970s. (PDF format)
• School is Dead: Illich ascribes his interest in public education to Everett Reimer who published his thoughts in a book entitled School is Dead where he outlines his relationship with Illich and the subsequent train of thought that both men pursued.

Article

• Education Without School: How It Can Be Done, NYRB Jan 7, 1971

Audio                                                     

• Illich speaking on schools. Date Unknown. sideA (13MB mp3) - sideB (12MB mp3)