Deschooling Society

I owe my interest in public education to Everett Reimer. Until we first met in Puerto Rico in 1958, I had never questioned the value of extending obligatory schooling to all people.

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance.

Some words become so flexible that they cease to be useful "School" and "teaching" are such terms. Like an amoeba they fit into almost any interstice of the language.

The university graduate has been schooled for selective service among the rich of the world.

Most utopian schemes and futuristic scenarios call for new and costly technologies, which would have to be sold to rich and poor nations alike.

This chapter was presented originally at a meeting of the American Educational Research Association, in New York City, February 6, 1971.

In a previous chapter I discussed what is becoming a common complaint about schools, one that is reflected, for example, in the recent report of the Carnegie Commission: In school registered students...

Our society resembles the ultimate machine which I once saw in a New York toy shop. It was a metal casket which, when you touched a switch, snapped open to reveal a mechanical hand.