{"id":95098,"date":"2026-03-10T17:07:03","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=95098"},"modified":"2026-03-13T08:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T05:33:16","slug":"why-schools-are-unnecessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/why-schools-are-unnecessary\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Don’t Need Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1971, nearly four decades before blockchain and when the internet existed only as ARPANET, the anarchist philosopher Ivan Illich wrote \u201cDeschooling Society\u201d<\/span>. In it he deconstructed the education system as a centralised intermediary and proposed a concept uncannily reminiscent of modern DeFi protocols.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the head of Professor Aremefe answered the question \u201cWhy do we need schools?<\/a>\u201d; today ForkLog examines the reverse: why educational institutions are a \u201cfiat\u201d system of knowledge and how to reclaim sovereignty over one\u2019s own mind.<\/p>\n

Not a temple but a bazaar<\/h2>\n
\n

Ivan Illich (1926\u20132002) was an Austrian-American philosopher of Croatian-Jewish origin, a Christian anarchist, theologian and left-wing critic of industrial society. He is best known for \u201cDeschooling Society\u201d and \u201cMedical Nemesis\u201d<\/span>, in which he showed how public institutions suppress human autonomy instead of supporting it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We have grown used to treating education as an unquestioned good and school as the only path to it. The classic educational conveyor belt arose at the behest of the industrial age. Factories needed legions of workers with a basic skill set and stamina for monotonous processes. The school system delivered standardised labour.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s post-industrial economy demands something very different. Markets need adaptive specialists able to relearn constantly, parse non-standard data and solve complex problems independently. Creators of university programmes fail to keep up with technology\u2019s tempo: curricula often go stale before they are even approved.<\/p>\n

Higher education is morphing into an expensive service that does not guarantee a job. Most employers now judge real competencies and portfolios of shipped projects.<\/p>\n

Illich, a critic of industrial progress, saw education otherwise. For him school was not a temple of science but a monopolistic corporation that manufactures a scarcity of knowledge in order to sell it packaged as \u201ccertificates\u201d and \u201cdiplomas\u201d.<\/p>\n

His half-century-old ideas read almost like a cypherpunk manifesto: scrap intermediaries; long live direct connections and P2P skill exchange.<\/p>\n

The centralisation of schools<\/h2>\n

Illich\u2019s central claim is simple: the institutionalisation of learning kills learning. Crudely, the modern school operates like a central bank with a monopoly on issuance. Only instead of money it mints social status.<\/p>\n

Illich argued that society has confused the process of learning with its symbolic outcome\u2014a diploma. This is a classic substitution, he thought: we start to perceive the institution as the source of the phenomenon itself. It seems to us that hospitals and clinics ensure health, police ensure safety, and educational establishments produce knowledge.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe illusion on which the school system is based is that learning is the result of teaching,\u201d wrote the philosopher.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In crypto parlance, school is a trusted third party that has become a single point of failure. You cannot simply learn to program or to heal; you must obtain a cryptographic signature (a diploma) from a central authority, or the system will not validate you.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe school is an advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is,\u201d maintained Illich.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Academic structures have turned knowledge into a scarce, certifiable commodity. A rigid hierarchy of authorised information providers and passive consumers has emerged. The student pays for time spent within the institution\u2019s walls to receive a final rectangle of cardboard. It is a mechanism that props up the status quo, where success is measured by hours served under bureaucratic supervision.<\/p>\n

A fundamental substitution follows. Society algorithmically equates the growth of intellect with physical attendance, and the cognition of the world with grades in a ledger. The chief metric of a pupil\u2019s success becomes signalled loyalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cognition fuses tightly with social certification. The system engineers an artificial scarcity of prestige. Status clings to the university\u2019s name on the document. Lacking the stamp automatically relegates even a top-tier autodidact to the pile of irrelevant candidates.<\/p>\n

Diploma inflation and the \u201chidden curriculum\u201d<\/h2>\n

As with fiat currencies, education suffers inflation. As ever more people get a degree, the value of a diploma declines. To preserve the same social standing, one must spend ever more years in schooling. It is an endless race that benefits only the factory of credentials.<\/p>\n

The deeper problem, Illich believed, lies elsewhere. He called it the \u201chidden curriculum\u201d. Officially school teaches mathematics and literature. Unofficially\u2014and this is the main lesson\u2014it teaches:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Passivity.<\/strong> Knowledge is what you are given, not what you take.<\/li>\n
  2. Dependence.<\/strong> You cannot act without permission or certification.<\/li>\n
  3. Consumerism.<\/strong> Any need is satisfied by purchasing an institutional service.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Those who pass through such traditional training emerge ideal consumers and loyal citizens but lose the capacity for autonomous creation. They can no longer learn on their own.<\/p>\n

    P2P networks of knowledge<\/h2>\n

    The most arresting part of \u201cDeschooling Society\u201d is the solution proposed. Illich did not call for book-burning; he called for ending schools\u2019 monopoly on access to the tools of learning.<\/p>\n

    In 1971 he proposed building \u201clearning webs\u201d. He distinguished four types of services necessary for free education, all of which fit the logic of modern marketplaces and decentralised applications:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Services for finding educational objects.<\/strong> Access to physical tools: libraries, laboratories, computers. In today\u2019s world this resembles the sharing economy or access to computing power.<\/li>\n
    2. Skill exchange.<\/strong> A database where people can list their abilities and the terms on which they are ready to share them. Essentially a P2P education exchange without middlemen: \u201cI need to learn Rust; I can teach you Spanish.\u201d<\/li>\n
    3. Finding partners.<\/strong> A communications network for discovering like-minded people keen to study the same topic. A prototype of themed communities in Discord or Telegram.<\/li>\n
    4. Directory of free educators.<\/strong> A catalogue of independent mentors whose reputation rests not on titles but on feedback from previous pupils. It recalls reputation systems in decentralised networks.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The description reads like a fully fledged specification for architects of the web and a decentralised ecosystem.<\/p>\n

      Technologies for liberation, not control<\/h2>\n

      Illich approached technology with caution, fearing its use to suppress autonomy, yet he saw its promise. What matters is not mere technical availability: society needs \u201cconvivial tools\u201d\u2014means that people can wield at their own discretion, acting autonomously and without institutional control.<\/p>\n

      The telephone network or post are such systems, being neutral and allowing people to connect directly. By contrast, the traditional school machine or television are built to broadcast centrally, turning a human from an active agent into a passive recipient.<\/p>\n

      The internet has partly embodied Illich\u2019s concepts. GitHub is an example of a space for collaborative development whose possibilities are broader, though they include efficient skill exchange: programmers publish open-source solutions, scrutinise others\u2019 code, propose architectural improvements and build rankings of professionals from their actual work. The community itself assesses a developer\u2019s competence without formal exam inspectors.<\/p>\n

      Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAO<\/a>) take independent learning a step further. Members of blockchain communities form guilds and working groups to research new cybersecurity protocols or create digital assets. Funding for educational initiatives is allocated transparently via smart contracts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      A skills economy and verification without bureaucracy<\/h2>\n

      The classical model of learning is bound up with debt. Deschooling, together with the crypto industry, offers an alternative model of Learn-to-Earn<\/span>. Blockchain protocols pay rewards in tokens for testing networks, translating technical documentation and finding vulnerabilities. For the first time, upskilling begins to generate income at the very moment one is mastering the tools.<\/p>\n

      The problem of proving qualifications is being tackled by non-transferable tokens (Soulbound Tokens, SBT<\/a>). The SBT concept rewires the verification of merit. A network issues digital attestations for a successful smart-contract audit or a hackathon win. These proof tokens are written permanently to a distributed ledger, forming a cryptographically secured, transparent r\u00e9sum\u00e9. The attestation is generated algorithmically on the fact of completed work, excluding the corrupt purchase of status.<\/p>\n

      The first step towards autonomy\u00a0<\/h2>\n

      \u201cDeschooling Society\u201d leaves mixed impressions. On the one hand, the diagnosis offered half a century ago sounds strikingly current. We still live in a society of credentialled people dependent on intermediary institutions.<\/p>\n

      On the other hand, we finally have tools to realise Illich\u2019s ideas. Open source is the \u201clearning web\u201d, where code and knowledge are open to all. Decentralisation allows the building of reputation systems independent of the state or university.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Self-education is shifting from hobby to baseline skill for thriving in a fast-changing environment. Illich urged the dismantling of the monopoly on knowledge:\u00a0<\/p>\n

      \n

      \u201cLiberating society from schooling means, first of all, abolishing the status that depends on the diploma.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      Illich\u2019s approach is a call for educational sovereignty. In the co-ordinates of the digital age, the thought can be put this way: \u201cNot your keys\u2014not your coins.\u201d A conscious step beyond formalised academic thinking becomes the first move towards flexible, self-directed command of one\u2019s intellect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      How a Catholic anarchist foresaw P2P education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"Ivan Illich and Deschooling Society","creation_source":"ai_translated","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1144],"tags":[1547,256,286],"class_list":["post-95098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-longreads","tag-crypto-anarchism","tag-education","tag-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"101","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"Ivan Illich and Deschooling Society","is_update":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95098"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95186,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95098\/revisions\/95186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}