Schooling as a rational rite of passage

Abstract

Starting from Illich’s identification of the compulsory schooling process with the rational initiation rite to the modern, free-market, society, the paper aims to detach the philosophical premises this expensive and unequal ritual is grounded in. After having referred to Van Gennep’s conception of the rites of passage, we shall show that the schooling rite corresponds to basic myths of the modern age, that is, progress, tolerance, freedom, and equality. In the second part of the paper, the genealogy of the modern schooling system shall be traced back to the first fully modern political theory, the one Thomas Hobbes had elaborated. According to Hobbes there are two ways out of state of nature and imperfect socialization: the universal possession of the new science of nature and of human nature grounded in mechanism; and the simultaneous renunciation to natural freedom which gives birth to the irresistible power of the sovereign. Hobbes accorded preference to the first one. The constitution of the rational political body represents a shortcut towards the perfect socialization which derives from equal and universal possession of science. The schooling thus represents a way out of pre-modern forms of political dissociation marked by inequality, servitude, and unhappiness, that is, a rational rite of passage from feudal society to the modern one. From this perspective, the modern economic and political system makes a whole with universal and compulsory schooling.