[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-599661-105":59,"doc-detail-599661-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","backing-in-to-the-foundations-read-online-free","Backing in to the Foundations - read online free","","An essay argues for abandoning education altogether, claiming major societal crises stem not from the failure of schooling but from its successes and from “well-educated” people enabling destructive ideas. It links education-driven expertise to economic collapse via private securitization, widening inequality through transnational corporate power, weakened local agriculture and biodiversity loss, and erosion of labor through globalized educated workforces and automation. It further connects education to environmental damage, global warming mechanisms, coral reef decline, and the weakening of ecological literacy, concluding that education equips people to act as more effective vandals without ecological wisdom.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/backing-in-to-the-foundations-read-online-free/599661/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/backing-in-to-the-foundations-read-online-free/599661.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"jayni","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the author propose about education?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The author argues that education itself should be abolished and that society should abandon education altogether.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the essay connect education to the subprime economic meltdown?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It claims that highly educated people developed financial strategies and algorithms that made the securitization and risk-spreading mechanisms possible.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What environmental harms does the essay say education makes possible?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It attributes environmental degradation to human actions enabled by educated expertise, including mechanisms behind global warming and damage to coral reefs and fish populations.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},599661,1792192666,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},3985747859343,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","| | Backing in to the Foundations |\n| --- | --- |\n\nRichard A. Quantz, Miami University  \nWhat we really need to do is to abolish education. Just get rid of it. Understand I am not saying that we should get rid of teacher education or schools of education, as many rightwing critics desire, but schools themselves. Just abolish them. And further understand that I am not making a case for Ivan Illich’s deschooling either; we ought not seek to replace formal schools with informal educational networks.1 No, I am suggesting that what we really need to do is to abandon education altogether. The worst problems of our times result from education, or, at least, what passes for education. The contemporary world’s most intractable, most destructive, most dangerous problems have been made possible by education, not the lack of it. Our problems do not arise from the failures of our education system, but its successes. Educators, look around, we are the cause of this mess.  \nTake, for example, our recent economic meltdown brought about by the dramatic increase in private securitization of sub-prime mortgages during the 1990s and 2000s. Consider the imaginative new financial strategies such as over-collateralization and disintermediation, and the brilliantly intricate “bundling” of sub-prime mortgages with AAA-rated prime mortgages which used the “law of averages” to spread the risk of these mortgages to “near zero” and, therefore, attracted investors from all over the world from the smallest to largest banks, from the individual IRAs and to large institutional pension funds, and resulted in the worst world economy since the 1930s.2 Without extremely well-educated people to develop the ideas and to create the necessary algorithms, these illusions of security could never have been built.  \nOr, for another example, take the growth of inequality that results from the new overlord class, the titans of the new transnational corporations, which has arisen to hover over the economic fields well fertilized with the destruction of the world’s communities.3 Consider the vulnerabilities in agricultural production due to the neoliberal policies that encourage the abandonment of traditional crops for local consumption to the attractive cash crops for the world markets, or the decrease in biodiversity that has resulted from the increase in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for agriculture. Or consider the rapid and continued loss of the mom and pop stores that are being replaced by the large corporate chains such as Wal-Mart. Or consider the decrease in the power of labor unions due to the ability of corporations to shut down production and move the jobs elsewhere to a growing population of educated workers in other lands capable  \nThe author would like to thank the faculty and students of the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Research, DePaul University whose invitation to address their miniconference in spring 2012 provided some of the initial thinking in this essay and whose follow-up questioning helped improve it.  \n1. Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1971) .  \n2. Ryan Barnes,“The Fuel That Fed The Subprime Meltdown,” [Investopedia.com](Investopedia.com), September 4, 2007, [http://www.invest](http://www.invest)[ ](http://www.invest)[opedia.com/articles/07/subprime-overview.asp\\#axzz2Gv0yN53u](opedia.com/articles/07/subprime-overview.asp#axzz2Gv0yN53u); Benjamin J. Keys et al.,“Mortgage Financing in the Housing Boom and Bust,” 2012, [http://www.nber.org/chapters/c12624.pdf](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c12624.pdf).  \n3. Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) .  \nof doing the job and willing to do it for less and that is made possible by new rapid and inexpensive modes of communication and means of transportation developed by the highly educated amongst us. Or even more destructive to working people, consider the contemporary robots that are capable of doing those same jobs ","cbCaieu0IZZdz4PJ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieu0IZZdz4PJ","pdf",422514,13,"English","# Core thesis: abolish education\n## Education’s alleged successes as the cause of crises\n## Economic collapse and financial innovation\n## Inequality, corporate power, and labor displacement\n## Environmental damage and ecological illiteracy","[{\"question\":\"What does the author propose about education?\",\"answer\":\"The author argues that education itself should be abolished and that society should abandon education altogether.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the essay connect education to the subprime economic meltdown?\",\"answer\":\"It claims that highly educated people developed financial strategies and algorithms that made the securitization and risk-spreading mechanisms possible.\"},{\"question\":\"What environmental harms does the essay say education makes possible?\",\"answer\":\"It attributes environmental degradation to human actions enabled by educated expertise, including mechanisms behind global warming and damage to coral reefs and fish populations.\"}]","Backing in to the Foundations - read online free | PDF",1792089206,33]