Why Schools Are Unnecessary - ForkLog: Cryptocurrencies, AI, Singularity, the Future

# Why Schools Are Unnecessary

Ivan Illich and His “Deschooling”

In 1971, nearly forty years before blockchain appeared and when the internet existed only as ARPANET, anarchist philosopher Ivan Illich wrote the book “Deschooling Society.” In it, he deconstructed the education system as a centralized intermediary and proposed a concept that remarkably resembles modern DeFi protocols.

Earlier, Professor Aremefe answered the question “Why are schools needed?” Today, ForkLog will try to explore the opposite: why educational institutions are a “fiat” knowledge system and how to regain sovereignty over one’s own mind.

Not a Temple, but a Marketplace

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) was an Austrian-American philosopher of Croatian-Jewish descent, Christian anarchist, theologian, and leftist critic of industrial society. He gained fame for his books “Deschooling Society” and “Medical Nemesis,” in which he showed how social institutions suppress human autonomy rather than support it.

We are accustomed to viewing education as an unconditional good, and school as the only path to it. The classic conveyor belt of education arose directly from the demands of the industrial era. Factories needed mass-produced workers with basic skills and resilience to monotonous processes. The school system successfully prepared standardized personnel.

Modern post-industrial economies demand fundamentally different skills. The market needs adaptable specialists who can constantly retrain, analyze non-standard data, and independently find solutions to complex problems. University curricula often lag behind technological development: programs are outdated even before they are officially approved.

Higher education is gradually becoming an expensive service that no longer guarantees employment. Today, most employers evaluate candidates based on real competencies and portfolios of completed projects.

Illich, a critic of industrial progress, viewed the education system differently. For him, school is not a temple of knowledge but a monopolistic corporation that artificially creates a knowledge deficit to sell it packaged as “certificates” and “diplomas.”

His ideas from half a century ago are now read almost as a hacker manifesto: down with intermediaries, long live direct connections and P2P skill exchange.

Centralization of Schools

Illich’s main thesis is simple: institutionalizing learning kills the very act of learning. Roughly speaking, modern school operates like a central bank with a monopoly on issuance. Instead of money, it issues social status.

Illich argued that society confuses the process of learning with its symbolic result—the diploma. In his view, this is a typical substitution: we begin to perceive the institution as the source of the phenomenon itself. We think hospitals and clinics ensure health, police ensure safety, and educational institutions produce knowledge.

“The illusion on which the school system is built is that learning is considered the result of teaching,” wrote the philosopher.

In crypto terminology, a school is a trusted third party that has become a single point of failure. You can’t just learn to program or treat people; you must obtain a cryptographic signature (diploma) from a central authority, or the system won’t validate you.

“School is an advertising agency that makes you believe society is exactly as it is,” Illich claimed.

Academic structures have turned knowledge into a limited, certifiable commodity. A strict hierarchy of authorized information providers and passive consumers has emerged. Students pay for their time inside the institution to receive a final cardboard rectangle. This mechanism sustains the status quo, where success is measured by hours spent under bureaucrats’ supervision.

A fundamental substitution occurs: society algorithmically equates intellectual development with physically attending classrooms, and the process of understanding the world with grades in a report card. The main metric of student success becomes the transmitted loyalty.

A strong fusion of knowledge and social certification arises. The system creates artificial prestige scarcity. Status is attached to the university’s name on the document. The absence of a stamp automatically categorizes even a highly self-taught individual as an irrelevant candidate.

Diploma Inflation and the “Hidden Curriculum”

Like fiat currencies, education experiences inflation. As more people obtain higher education, the value of a diploma declines. To maintain the same social status, more years of study are required. It becomes an endless race, profitable only for the credentialing industry.

But Illich believed the deeper problem lies elsewhere. He called it the “hidden curriculum.” Officially, schools teach math and literature. Unofficially—and this is the main lesson—they teach:

1. Passivity. Knowledge is what is given to you, not what you take.
2. Dependence. You cannot act without permission or certification.
3. Consumerism. Any need is satisfied by purchasing institutional services.

People who go through this traditional education become ideal consumers and loyal citizens but lose the ability for autonomous creativity. They are no longer capable of self-directed learning.

P2P Knowledge Networks

The most exciting part of “Deschooling Society” is the proposed solution. Naturally, Illich did not call for burning books but for destroying the monopoly of schools on access to learning tools.

In 1971, he suggested creating “educational webs.” Illich identified four types of services necessary for free education, all of which align with modern marketplaces and decentralized applications:

1. Services for finding educational resources. Access to physical tools: libraries, laboratories, computers. Today, this resembles sharing economies or access to computing power.
2. Skill exchange. A database where people can list their abilities and conditions for sharing them. Essentially, a peer-to-peer educational marketplace without intermediaries: “I need to learn Rust coding, I can teach you Spanish.”
3. Partner search. A communication network for finding like-minded individuals interested in the same topic. This is a prototype of thematic communities on Discord or Telegram.
4. Directory of independent educators. A catalog of autonomous mentors whose reputation is based not on titles but on reviews from previous students. Similar to reputation systems in decentralized networks.

This description looks like a perfect technical assignment for architects of the global web and decentralized ecosystems.

Technologies for Liberation, Not Control

Illich approached technology cautiously, fearing its potential use for suppressing individual independence, but he also saw its potential. He believed that not just technical accessibility matters: society needs “convivial tools”—means that individuals can control and use autonomously, without institutional oversight.

Telephone networks or postal services serve as examples of such systems because they are neutral and allow direct communication. In contrast, traditional school machinery or television are built differently: they broadcast centrally, turning individuals from active agents into passive recipients.

The internet has partially embodied Illich’s ideas. GitHub is an example of a space for collaborative development, with capabilities far beyond, including efficient skill exchange: programmers publish open-source solutions, analyze others’ code, suggest architectural improvements, and build reputations based on actual work. The community independently assesses developers’ competencies without formal examiners.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) take independent learning to the next level. Blockchain communities form guilds and working groups to explore new cybersecurity protocols or create digital assets. Funding educational initiatives occurs transparently via smart contracts.

Skill Economy and Verification Without Bureaucracy

Traditional education models are inherently tied to debt burdens. Deschooling, together with the crypto industry, offers an alternative: Learn-to-Earn. Blockchain protocols reward users with tokens for testing networks, translating technical documentation, and finding vulnerabilities. The process of skill development begins to generate income right from the start.

The problem of verifying qualifications is addressed by non-transferable tokens (Soulbound Tokens, SBT). SBTs change the process of credential verification: the network issues digital attestations for successful smart contract audits or hackathon wins. These tokens are permanently recorded in a distributed ledger, forming a cryptographically secure, transparent résumé. The proof is generated automatically based on completed work, eliminating the possibility of corrupt purchases of status.

The First Step Toward Autonomy

“Deschooling Society” leaves mixed impressions. On one hand, the diagnosis made half a century ago sounds especially relevant today. We still live in a society of diploma-holders dependent on intermediary institutions.

On the other hand, we finally have tools to implement Illich’s ideas. Open Source is precisely the “educational web,” where code and knowledge are open to all. Decentralization allows building reputation systems independent of the state or universities.

Self-education is transforming from a hobby into a fundamental skill necessary for success in a rapidly changing environment. Illich called to break the monopoly on knowledge:

“Liberating society from school means, above all, rejecting the status that depends on a diploma.”

Illich’s approach is a call to develop educational sovereignty. In the digital age, this can be summarized as: “Not your keys—not your coins.” A conscious move beyond formal academic thinking is the first step toward flexible, autonomous management of intelligence.