Learning is a natural process that happens in every imaginable setting. Schools are designed, in theory, to promote and enhance learning; some do this with highly-structured curriculum, while others use a more democratic, student-driven approach. Schools may also function to stifle criticism and as ways to instill the values of state policy, religious dogma, or other value systems.

Ivan Illich suggests that mandatory education and schools as institutions may do more to hinder learning than enhance it: ”The school system today performs the threefold function common to powerful churches throughout history. It is simultaneously the repository of society’s myth, the institutionalization of that myth’s contradictions, and the locus of the ritual which reproduces and veils the disparities between myth and reality…” (Deschooling Society, 1970)

Educational visionary Pat Carini notes that the proper function of a school is not ”to ‘figure [students] out’—and certainly not to change them into someone else. The purpose is simpler and more ordinary: to be more sensitive to who they are and are becoming, so that, recognizing them as persons, we can better assist and support their learning.” (Patricia Carini, From Another Angle. Teachers College Press, 2000)