Creative Destruction in Education

Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

The concept of “creative destruction” in economics describes how new innovations replace and make obsolete older systems. While many believe this process in education involves replacing teachers with technology, a more profound change may be occurring: a fundamental shift in the form and function of schooling itself. This post explores how deschooling, homeschooling, and unschooling are challenging traditional educational paradigms and potentially reshaping the future of learning.

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich was published in 1971 and John Holt’s ideas about unschooling were first presented in his book Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better (1976) and fleshed out in his magazine, Growing Without Schooling (1977). Homeschooling—children learning in their homes and communities—has been around as long as families have existed, though in the past 200 years compulsory school laws have made children learning in any place but school difficult. Nonetheless, homeschooling continues in rural and urban settings today. Further, all three concepts are based on the truth that schooling is not the same as education. None are about denying education to anyone, but rather about opening the aperture of education’s lens beyond its narrow metrics for school success.

It was popular in the late 20th century and up until recently to view school, and higher education in particular, as a trusted path to status and riches. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 8.6 million students were enrolled in college in 1970. In 2000 the number was 15.3 million, about a 78% increase over 30 years. In the midst of this big increase were some scholars and teachers warning that college wasn’t the right path for everyone and that success in school doesn’t necessarily turn into success in life. This does not mean we don’t need places for people to learn and share knowledge and meet people. In fact, it means creating more places and opportunities for these interactions to occur instead of just in school, a place built for large-scale, conventional instruction based on one’s age.

Ivan Illich was very clear in Deschooling Society that he was talking about disestablishing education, not eradicating it. The Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights is the part of the the First Amendment that prohibits the government from establishing or supporting a religion. Illich was a Catholic priest, historian, and polymath. David Cayley, a scholar of Illich’s work, describes Illich’s position on schooling this way: “Illich himself always protested that he was not against schools as such: ‘I never wanted to do away with schools … I’ve nothing against schools! … Schools that are freely accessible allow the organization of certain specific learning tasks that a person might propose to himself.’ … What he was against was compulsory schooling as a legal monopoly of educational services, able to confer and withhold social privilege. … He did not call for the disestablishment of the post office or the public libraries. He claimed that the school made itself a sacred cow by means of rituals and incantations that were structurally the same as the liturgical practices by which the church is created.”¹

I will explore Illich’s claim more fully in future posts to show how this argument fits in quite well with the rise and spread of compulsory schooling throughout the world and the United States in particular. But his point that schooling is a social construct to “confer and withhold social privilege” has particular salience in today’s society where it is no secret that families can use their connections and wealth to ensure their children get admitted to the “right” universities regardless of their poor school performance. There are even businesses and counseling services to help ensure successful placements for the well-to-do.

At the lower grade levels there were and still are many classroom teachers who advocate for more child-directed activities and other reforms, but the structure of schooling often inhibits or prevents them. Based on his experiences as a fifth-grade teacher in exclusive private schools, John Holt came to view school as an empty ritual that diminishes children. In his first book, How Children Fail (1964), Holt wanted to figure out why, despite his and others’ best efforts to teach, the majority of students—most from well-to-do families—didn’t learn what was taught. The students who passed a test on Friday couldn’t pass the same test on Monday. “School is the place where children learn to be stupid,” Holt concluded.

Holt went from being a teacher trying to reform school to a major critic of schooling and proponent of children’s rights. Holt wanted to show how people could live and learn without years of compulsory schooling, as humanity has done until the past 200 years. Holt’s book Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better (1976) ended with a call to create an underground railroad for children who want to leave school and learn at home and in their communities. That’s when some parents wrote to him that they were teaching their children at home instead of sending them to school. In 1977 Holt started Growing Without Schooling (GWS) magazine to support this new-found community. He noted that though the number of unschoolers was small (Holt coined “unschooling” and preferred it to “homeschooling” since it describes how learning doesn’t require people to turn their homes into schools), he hoped that schools would learn why they were losing students and start to cooperate with families in ways that support different places and schedules for children to learn and grow in our society. Unschooling is not about defunding public schools. Unschooling is about using all the people and places where children can learn and grow without the restraints about learning that schools have. Holt supported vouchers for creating a variety of places for children to learn but he was incremental in his approach. If children prefer conventional schooling then they should be able to access it, but Holt wanted more options for children.

Holt wrote in the first issue of GWS:

GWS will not be much concerned with schools, even alternative or free schools, except as they may enable people to keep their children out of school by 1) Calling their own home a school, or 2) enrolling their children, as some have already, in schools near or far which then approve a home study program. We will, however, be looking for ways in which people who want or need them can get school tickets—credits, certificates, degrees, diplomas, etc.—without having to spend time in school. And we will be very interested, as the schools and schools of education do not seem to be, in the act and art of teaching, that is, all the ways in which people, of all ages, in or out of school, can more effectively share information, ideas, and skills.

Unfortunately, schools have doubled down on testing, time on task, and raising standards over the years. To do so, they removed or curtailed recess, reduced arts, humanities, and physical education offerings, and increased the hours for student work in and out of school. The results were not very encouraging before the pandemic, and since then they have been dismal.

The NY Times Magazine recently printed an article, America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?, that encouraged me that alternatives to school are likely to continue to grow slowly but surely. I was expecting more pills and counseling to be the article’s takeaway, but the article leans towards the need to change the structure of schooling and adults’ attitudes about children.²

… The experience of school has changed rapidly in recent generations. Starting in the 1980s, a metrics-obsessed regime took over American education and profoundly altered the expectations placed on children, up and down the class ladder. In fact, it has altered the experience of childhood itself.

This era of policymaking has largely ebbed, with disappointing results. Math and reading levels are at their lowest in decades. The rules put in place by both political parties were well-meaning, but in trying to make more children successful, they also circumscribed more tightly who could be served by school at all.

“What’s happening is, instead of saying, ‘We need to fix the schools,’ the message is, ‘We need to fix the kids,’” said Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College and the author of “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.”

“The track has become narrower and narrower, so a greater range of people don’t fit that track anymore,” he said. “And the result is, we want to call it a disorder.” …

Later in the article:

“Rather than wait for changes to come, many parents are giving up on the system altogether. A poll in 2023 found that about one in three home-schooling parents were unhappy with how their schools had educated their children with special needs, prompting them to leave. Parents are also increasingly turning to microschools, essentially learning pods with small numbers of children who can receive more individual attention.

“Some of these parents identify as being part of an “unschooling” movement, in which they believe that school has done more harm than good for their children. They may be onto something. A 2016 paper showed that many young adults with childhood diagnoses of A.D.H.D. saw their symptoms improve once they left school and began working in a field that interested them.”

Many of the comments to the Times article echo points I’ve heard and read about education reform since I joined Growing Without Schooling in 1981. In her replies to commenters, the article’s author, Jia Lynn Yang, notes:

@Cheryl Thank you for sharing this. I am struck by how many teachers in these comments have tried to fight these changes, only to face resistance from leadership.

@gnomegirl It’s especially valuable to hear from students, so I appreciate that you’ve shared here. I think you are pointing to some critical confusion over the basic mission of school. What does it mean if the students can’t tell what it is?

@Dr. T I think you’re onto something here. The use of metrics has become a way to instill “rigor” into many different aspects of our society and economy. But their very use, as you point out, is not necessarily neutral. And at a certain point, they can have an effect on people that ends up being profoundly counterproductive.

@Carrie Thank you for sharing this perspective. While reporting this, one expert pointed me to a study showing that mental health ER visits tend to be higher during the school year and then significantly lower during summer and winter breaks. Pretty heartbreaking.

@Ann Thank you for sharing this. I was struck during my research that in all this high-level policymaking, children’s own voices have been missing.

Teachers, students, and researchers know and see what’s going on and they are speaking out about it, but, as these comments indicate, they continue to be ignored by schools’ headmasters. These are issues that were recognized and called out by school reformers in the 20th century yet we continue to apply more schooling as the solution.

Even if parents support a child’s decision not to attend school there can be repercussions from school officials who invoke medical reasons for such a decision. The medical term for people who resist going to school is school phobia. But there isn’t a corresponding term for people who get sick from school. The medical profession recognizes iatrogenic illness—getting a new sickness from the medical treatment you receive for your original sickness—but the education establishment does not. Apparently one can never get enough schooling.

Rather than force attendance in school I hope that schools will start to work with deschoolers, unschoolers, and homeschoolers who see a public role for education that places family life, doing things, and social interactions as valuable learning experiences, not just passing tests and remaining compliant at one’s desk.

The concept of creative destruction in education is not just about replacing old technologies with new ones, but about fundamentally reimagining the purpose and structure of learning itself. Deschooling, homeschooling, and unschooling are challenging the traditional educational paradigm, offering alternatives that prioritize individual growth, real-world experiences, and self-directed learning. The increasing interest in these alternative approaches, coupled with growing dissatisfaction with conventional schooling, signals a potential shift in how we view education. It’s clear that the one-size-fits-all model of schooling is failing many students, and the metrics-driven approach is often counterproductive to genuine learning and well-being.

Moving forward, it’s crucial that we continue to question the assumptions underlying our current educational system and remain open to diverse learning pathways. By embracing the principles of flexibility, individuality, and real-world relevance we can work towards a more inclusive and effective educational landscape for the 21st century. Only by fostering this kind of creative destruction can we hope to build an educational system that truly serves the needs of all learners in our rapidly changing world.

1. Cayley, David. Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey, Penn State University Press, 2021, pp. 102–103.

2. Retrieved on Dec. 3, 2025 from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/magazine/youth-mental-health-crisis-schools.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k8.ja--.mdP_iFhbp3ua&smid=url-share