Illich makes a radical critique of education, capitalism, statism, and almost everything that is both extremely focused and also directs slashes at nearly every underpinning assumption of society. Illich's most direct criticism is at the idea that formal education solves problems. Rather than being about skill acquisition or personal development, Illich identifies schools as the ideological wing of the consumption-production engine that is capitalism. The role of schools is to produce ignorance rather than insight, to create credentials and envy of credentials rather than mastery, to suck up surplus labor and intellect in the Promethean furnace of a culture consuming itself. The criticism starts with Dewey's ideas about education, and moves through Johnson's Great Society, international development, drawing heavily on Illich's personal experiences in Mexico, the Vietnam War, and the industrial design of the transistor radio. Don't mistake this for Marxism though; Illich calls out the Soviet system as another gear in the world-spanning educational system.

Against traditional classrooms and curriculum, Illich imagines 'learning webs', where computers would connect people who wanted to learn something to people who already knew it, forming tutoring pairings and affinity groups that meet in cafes and converted shopfronts. Mass production of tapes and audiobooks, along with appropriate technology in the developing world, will liberate minds. Most of Illich's criticisms are directed at the liberal consensus, and he's not afraid of citing Milton Friedman's voucherization of school systems as a positive example, but mostly it's the idea of any sort of formal, obligatory, schooling that is the enemy. There's a direct line between military discipline and educational discipline, and for Illich both are wasteful, anti-human, and evil. The institutional attempt to achieve a goal will always fulfill it's opposite.

As a historical artifact, this work was published in 1971, when for a brief glorious moment it seemed like the Counterculture would triumph, and that all the corrupt and evil institutions of a rotten society would crumble to be replaced by a new dawn met people where they were. Now, more than 40 years on, we know that this moment would last only a little longer. But Illich, even in his strident utopianism, wasn't wrong. Speaking as someone in the 23rd grade, too much education is useless credentialism that serves to indebt the ambitious working classes. Those with power and money have their own networks of private tutors to pursue actually effective education for their children, while basic skills like knowing how to do something, or how to think in a straight line for 500 words, are increasingly the privilege of the elite.