If Schools Didn't Exist: A Study in the Sociology of Schools

by Nils Christie, Lucas Cone (Editor), Joachim Wiewiura (Editor)

A classic in the philosophy of education, considering the fundamental purpose and function of schools, translated into English for the first time.This classic 1971 work on the fundamental purpose and function of schools belongs on the same shelf as other landmark works of the era, including Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and John Holt's How Children Fail. Nils Christie's If School Didn't Exist, translated into English for the first time, departs from these works by not considering schooling (and deschooling) as much as schools and their specific community and social contexts. Christie argues that schools should be proving grounds for how to live together in society rather than assembly lines producing future citizens and employees.

Christie presents three examples of schools in different settings--a French village school that became the bedrock of its community; federal government-run schools for Native Americans that facilitated the experience of inferiority; and a British secondary school that reinforced class stratification. He considers the school's function as a storage space (for an unproductive segment of society), as a means for differentiation (based on merit), and as distributor of knowledge. He introduces the idea of the school-society, a self-governing body of students, teachers, parents, and community; and he offers a vision of a society based on normalizing the needs and values of local communities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Psychology, Sociology

246 pages, Paperback

Published August 4, 2020

About the author

Nils Christie was a Norwegian criminologist known for his criticism of penal incarceration and drug prohibition. Christie was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He was also the president of the Scandinavian Council for Criminology and the director of the Institute for Criminology and Penal Law in Norway. Christie wrote about the massacre of prisoners from Yugoslavia in Norwegian concentration camps during WWII.

Reviews

[Liliann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of things I don't agree with, but coming from a sociologist he did make me think more of the structure of schools, being a teacher myself.
Well written, so it was easy to follow.

[Tanya Rhodes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just translated from Norwegian, this book was written in 1971 and shares ideology with Freire and Illich. Still hugely relevant, Christie describes schools as a storage place for unproductive members of society, and sorting facility organised to replicate existing structures of social inequality. But Christie shares a vision of hope in the form of schools as autonomous micro communities, where children find a sense of belonging and purpose through shared responsibility and decision making, and reciprocal connections with the local community.

[Toby Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up there amongst the Illich and the Freire, If Schools Didn't Exist is sage and only mildly acerbic and generally on the money.

With Goffman, Christie spots the subterranean but hardly hard to spot similarities between the penal colony and the school community, and having traced their contours offers some ways out.

Written in 1971 and yet no less current now than it was then (I write as someone who was just approaching the stage at which he was learning to dis-enjoy school at the time and who runs one now). Christie's primary tip is that schools will never escape the hard cast of their social function until they are able to kick free of the bolts that bind them in place (externally set exams, standardised curricula, idiot 'subjects'), and I agree.

[Jean The Queen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahh yes, schools. A place to keep the useless people and bore all spirit out of them so they can be plugged into their rightful spot at the chosen time and civilization can drone on. I knew I disliked them for a reason.
Do yourself a favor and skip the foreword.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can get past the foreword written by Judith Suissa, you will probably be able to finish the book. On top of being tedious to read, the foreword threatens to overwhelm the main subject.

[April Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is brilliant, and as relevant today as ever. His meditation on a school to prison pipeline has come to pass in other countries, like the US. What a vision this is, a dreamy but critically though-out solution to problems of school systems and how bureaucratic disciplines fail our students and their communities.

He did well to show the harm and reached back in time to explore case study schools, like the indoctrination of Native American children in the 1930's (heart-breaking nightmare). He also showed a British school, where students were labeled from the start for the high and low performing tracks- and how demotivating and destructive it was (as well as an example "solution" school where the community needs were delivered through relevant education, and where students have more of a voice).

I wish more educators read this and implemented these ideas.

Seriously, this man is brilliant and thought out most every angle of what school is, how it's organized, how it fails, and what it could do if we imagined the bigger picture.