Thinking in Systems — What School Really Teaches

I read the book Thinking in Systems with one idea in mind:

The purpose of a system is what it does.

That idea sounds simple. But the more I sat with it, the more it unsettled me.

Because it forces a different kind of question—one that doesn’t rely on mission statements or intentions:

What does school actually teach?

We tend to answer that question with subjects—Math, Science, English.

But if we’re honest, that’s only part of the story.

Content may be what school claims to teach. But it may not be all it actually teaches.

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Behavior Over Intent

Donella Meadows makes a point that is easy to overlook but difficult to ignore:

If a system consistently produces a specific result, that result is its purpose—regardless of what anyone claims the purpose to be.

That shifts everything.

It means we don’t evaluate systems by what they promise.
We evaluate them by what they do.

So what does a school system do?

What is done after twelve years of “going to school”?

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The Hidden Curriculum

I had a math teacher, Mrs. Whisler, at San Bernardino Valley College. She was a brilliant teacher, but what stayed with me wasn’t just the math. It was her understanding that education extended beyond the classroom. She called it the hidden curriculum.

How long does it take to get to class if I drive?
Where is the best spot to park my car?
How do I schedule my classes around work?

The Hidden Curriculum

None of that is written in a syllabus.
But it is learned.

My wife Tammy tells a story about how she got to school each day growing up. It wasn’t simple. It involved school buses, city buses, transfers—figuring things out along the way.

It wasn’t efficient.

But it taught something.

It taught logistics. It taught responsibility. It taught how to navigate the real world.

That was curriculum too.

Which raises a possibility:

What if the “hidden curriculum” isn’t secondary at all?

What if it’s the system doing exactly what systems do—producing outcomes whether we name them or not?

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What Are We Losing?

In that light, content starts to look different.

Not unimportant—but incomplete.

Content is one of the things schools teach. But it may not be the most important thing.

Today, we’ve made schooling more efficient. More controlled. More functional.

We’ve also moved rapidly toward online environments.

And I find myself wondering:

In our effort to improve the system, what have we removed from it?

If the purpose of a system is what it does, then we have to look carefully at what today’s school system is producing—not just academically, but behaviorally.

Are students still learning how to navigate the world?

Or are we creating environments where everything is structured, guided, and optimized… but less experienced?

This takes me to a scene in my favorite movie, Good Will Hunting (1997), the “Taster’s Choice” moment. Robin Williams advises Matt Damon that reading about life is not the same as living it. An environment where one is intellectually “book-smart”, but lacking in lived experience.

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What Is School, Really?

So I come back to the original question:

What does school actually teach?

If the purpose of a system is what it does, then we have to look honestly at what our schools are producing.

Not just test scores or graduation rates—but habits, behaviors, capabilities.

Are we teaching students how to think?
How to navigate complexity?
How to engage with the real world?

Or are we optimizing for something narrower?

I don’t have a final answer.

But I do know this:

If we want to understand education, we can’t just listen to what the system says it does.

We have to watch what it actually does.

And be willing to follow that truth—

wherever it leads.

Next Week

Next week, I’ll share a different side of this experience—what it was like to struggle through the book Thinking in Systems and what it changed in how I think.

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