In Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich argues that the current school system confuses teaching with learning and too often the knowledge people actually use is learned outside of school. Illich disapproves of the traditional method he calls “education funnels” and suggests society teach instead through “educational webs.” This system would cultivate students’ self-motivation to explore rather than making teachers the sole proprietors of information. In his view, a good education system:

  1. Provides all who want to learn with access to available sources at anytime
  2. Empowers all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn
  3. Furnishes all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known

Goals of the educational revolution need to be:

  1. Abolish control over educational values by institutions
  2. Give freedom to teach and exercise skills
  3. Allow individuals to call and hold meetings in order to share human creativity and resources
  4. Allow people to choose teachers from their peers to allow the deconstruction of professions

“[Students] should be able to meet around a problem chosen and defined by their own initiative.”

He sought to accomplish these goals through methods involving technology and through four main approaches which would enable students to gain access to any educational resources in order to achieve their goals.

  • Reference services to educational objects: rather than only allowing learners to use objects like maps, microscopes and even lab spaces for specific purposes at specific times, these “educational objects” should be made public and freely accessible to encourage exploration and discovery on one own’s schedule.
  • Skill exchanges: bring together someone that knows something with someone who wants to know something – iif everyday actions like driving, cooking and conversing can be learned by mimicry and observation, why can’t more complex skills be learned in the same manner?
  • Peer matching: this brings people on the same level together, much like a club might
  • Reference services to educators at large: there will be an increase in the numbers of masters needed, as learners will need leadership when they start to struggle; creating a network of these masters or educators creates a safety net

Education should be asking ‘what do learners need to be in contact with to learn,’ not ‘what do they need to learn.’ Illich argues for the mass availability of technology and resources. Education personnel would then become more like librarians or guides rather than teachers. A market for learning could develop, with less restrictive definitions on what qualifies as an educational tool. “Now bureaucratization and organization have placed much of science beyond the public reach.”  We “…should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.”  Illich also sees the environment a person is in to be one of the most valuable educational resources.
Illich makes a case that in a de-schooled society an easily accessible learning network of valuable information would be created. This has, in fact, happened but not in the way Illich predicted. Humans are naturally inclined to sharing information and knowledge. Louis Khan said “Education is something, which is always on trial because no system can ever capture the real meaning of learning…. Schools began with a man under a tree who did not know he was a teacher, sharing his realization with a few other who did not know they were students.” Some people may think that learning would cease if schools were abolished, however, this is not the case at all. The internet shows us this with its endless tutorials on how to do just about anything. This mass conglomeration of information has in fact become for many the most valuable source of collecting information that is relevant and necessary. Through YouTube alone you can learn skills from complex trigonometry to how to repair a transmission on a 1983 Chevy. Illich says “technology is available to develop either independence and learning or bureaucracy and teaching” and even he couldn’t imagine the level of technology we would have today. The “Learning Web” has actually become the world wide web but we still have the same bureaucratic system of  learning that has gone relatively unchanged since the birth of the Industrial Revolution.