In his 1971 book Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich asserts that school “tends to make a total claim on the time and energies of its participants”. This, he says, “makes the teacher into custodian, guardian, and therapist”. The list does not have to end there: we are also mentors, job counsellors, social workers, coaches, facilitators, judges, ideologues.
As teachers we are, regardless of how we like to frame it, involved in acts of control. Illich saw this “total claim” as inherently negative, a coercive authoritarianism. The roles we perform as teachers become congealed and mystified and can often lead to unchecked power, especially when there is a lack of transparency.
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