Illich, I. (1970). Deschooling Society. Cuernavaca, Mexico: CIDOC.  Downloadable from: http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html

p. 20  “The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.”

As I continue to argue, from my perspective, the best form of foundational education is unschooling with a discipleship emphasis.  However, no family is able to pass on to the children everything that needs to be learned for the child to become a mature contributor to the welfare of the community.  There comes a time (sometimes earlier, and sometimes later in the child’s education) where there must be recourse to learned and skilled others in the community.

The question is, how is the access obtained?  Illich’s suggestion is that there be networks or services that provided a clearing-house for those with passionate concerns to meet with those with the same passion and desire to learn.  A forum for connecting those in the community who are experts in a field of knowledge or skills-set, with those who want to acquire that knowledge and/or skills-set.

This should not be institutionalized, where the financial remuneration for the exchange of knowledge and skills comes from government taxes, or even mostly from other institutions such as the church.  These clearing-houses need to be privately managed, and the financial exchange be between the families seeking the knowledge/skills and the supplier of the knowledge/skills.

I am calling these clearing-houses Flexi-Learning Centres.  They are not to take over the role of the home.  However, home-based education uses the home as a bases, where learning is done in and out of the home, and such networks and services, as suggested by Illich, become a means of accessing a whole range of supplementary educational experiences. 

A Flexi-Learning Centre would not be a school; there would be no compulsion, there would be no age-grade segregation, there would be no government-mandated curriculum, there would be nothing of school in the mix.  Activity may take place at the Flexi-Learning Centre, if appropriate, but there is no requirement for this to take place if learning would be better accessed in another place.  However, it would be a location where families could find out about what is available, where, when and at what cost, and delivered by whom.