I skipped two years of high school. This wasn't because I was some stellar student or something. I was supposed to be there for those years. I got into a little trouble because I didn't go and the state even threatened legal action in response to my refusal to attend but none of that stopped me and, to this day, I still feel that it was the right decision. I had seen through rhetoric and I understood what was really going on in the educational system, I saw how it treated us, and what its real functions was so I refused to participate. This post isn't about me though (which is good because I don't like to write about myself). My own experiences only provide a convenient frame through which to view the ways in which the educational system in this country is not only failing to educate students, but also damaging their mental stability, forcing them to conform to nonsensical or outdated social standards, and conditioning them to submit to the authority even when the authority is clearly wrong. From where I sit, it looks like the schools are largely doing students a disservice. They treat kids like criminals and are shocked when they act like criminals, they fill their head with propaganda, they punish their curiosity and creativity, they teach them to be victims while claiming to protect them, and above all else, they train them to bow, unquestioningly, to those in power.
Obviously, we all need an education. We cannot function in the world if we are illiterate, can't do math, or have no historical knowledge with which to contextualize the events of the modern world. Understanding scientific principals is highly helpful when we are pondering the unknown. Critical thinking skills are important in our lives because they often shield us from being taken advantage of by those who prey on the unwary. The schools will claim to teach those things and they will spend some time doing that but, in my experience and the experience of the people whom I have spoken with about this subject, that is far from their primary function.
After missing over 100 straight days of class (I did actually show up to socialize on a few of those days but I refused to go to the classes themselves), my father was threatened with legal action (which included fines, jail time, and having me removed from the home) by the state and I believe this demonstrates the interest that the authorities have in keeping kids in the "conformity centers" that they call schools. They will give excuses about funding but that explanation does not really follow. The system, as it is, is overcrowded and under funded. By not showing up, one is relieving some of the burden. "He has to be here or we don't get paid for him being here" is what they told us. The state (that state, anyway) does fund schools in that way and that really gets at the heart of this issue. We must ask, why does the state have such an interest in attendance in the first place? I can give you a hundred reasons to believe that the authorities have no concern for our well-being so the "it's for the good of the children" explanation doesn't seem to hold up and distributing funding in the way that they do is only an issue because it was made to be an issue. Those things lead me to believe that the real concern of the authority is that we (or our kids) are being taught what they want us being taught. The schools are propaganda distribution machines (one need only to look at a "history" class or what passes for drug "education" to see that). The authority holds funding over the heads of the educators and threatens parents to give them both an incentive to make sure that the children are in the schools where they can receive the approved messages.
To make sure that the students absorb those approved messages, the educators will massively overstate the importance of one's early educational experience which can become extremely harmful to a student's emotional well-being. I remember all my teachers (particularly in middle and high school) telling us about how "important" it was for us to be there, learning all the "important" lessons that they had to teach. It is easy to write all that stuff off as inspirational nonsense but it serves another purpose. It makes the students feel like their futures depends on their performance, their acceptance of the official narrative, and, ultimately, their conformity to the wishes of an authority. Now think of the unnecessary stress and fear this creates for a curious kid with questions to ask. The schools present the student with some piece of propaganda and when he or she questions it, he or she is told that he or she is wrong and given a bad grade. Kids are then told that they must learn these pieces of propaganda because if they don't, they will never amount to anything in life. Being young and foolish enough to believe what they are told, they feel that they must chose between their drive to question and seek the truth and what they believe will allow them to prosper in adulthood. That kind of thing is a difficult and often painful choice to make. It takes a toll on a person. The educators have no regard for the pain that these sorts of internal conflicts can cause, however. The goal is to create conformity and the cost is of no consequence to them, even if it does leave the students high strung, on edge, and emotionally distressed on a regular basis because they are in constant fear of failure.
When I was in middle school, I was forced to sit through a particularly bad sexual education class. The P.E. coach who was teaching us, presented us with extremely inaccurate information (like "one can get pregnant from butt sex" because "the sperm will find a way"). I questioned those statements (I was pretty young but I wasn't stupid and I wasn't going to let something like that go unchallenged). She told me that I didn't know what I was talking about (even though I was right) and that I had to learn those things whether I wanted to or not. She continued to make statements like that and I questioned them again. That time, I was given a zero for the day and sent to the office to be punished. I knew that I was right but I was also put in a position where I had to pretend to be wrong and conform to the narrative, if I wanted the success that going to school would allegedly allow me to achieve.
It was at that point that I began to understand what the game was really about. They were not there to educate us. They wanted to teach us to conform and submit to the authority regardless of whether it was right or wrong in its position. There is other evidence of that goal as well. There have been pushes all across this country to force students to wear uniforms. They say that it is being done to diminish divisions between rich and poor students and to "reduce gang activity" (even though it does neither of those things). In reality, it only normalizes the idea of being controlled by an authority. Some topics are taboo to talk about in schools and those rules are used to rob students of their creativity. Any student who raises a controversial idea or one that does not fit the narrative is punished for "inappropriate" behavior and he or she learns that he or she should only talk and think about things that the authority approves of. Finally, information that does not fit the official world view of the authorities is completely ignored by the educators so that students do not have the opportunity to develop any subversive ideas, though they will try to excuse that by saying something about "censoring 'difficult' or 'upsetting' topics."
I once had a teacher hand out blank progress reports to the class and ask us to sign them. Our signature signified that we accepted what was written on the blank piece of paper. I refused to sign because I had, rightly, been taught (outside of school) that one should never sign a blank document because it could be used to make it appear that he or she has agreed to something that he or she did not actually agree to. I told the others in the class that they should not sign their progress reports until they have been completed. The teacher screamed at me and said "stop spreading your POISON!" Typically, I don't consider good advice to be "poison" but the school officials did not agree with me. They told me that I should have just signed the report because "a teacher wouldn't lie" and that I needed to be punished for disrupting the class. Again, the lesson had nothing to do with education and everything to do with submission.
Not shockingly, when there is a population of highly stressed, highly repressed, emotionally unstable, and on edge individuals, some of them act out in various and, sometimes, harmful ways and this has led schools to begin treating students like inmates in a prison which only makes the problems worse. When I went to school there were lots of fights, there were lots of drugs, and there was lots of sex. The way I see things, that was how we were responding to the situation that we were in. Some people snapped under the pressure and became violent. Some of us got high to relieve our stress and we all looked for comfort in each others company. To the authorities and the educators, those things were problems that must be addressed with the use of force (not understanding or not caring that they were, in part, responsible for creating them). Every year, the intensity of the scrutiny that we were under increased and so did the severity of the punishments for even minor misbehavior. They said that they wanted to stop bullies so anyone who fought, even to defend themselves, would now be arrested for assault, put into the system, and robed of their future by receiving adult charges at an age so young that they couldn't even legally drive a car. Showing affection to one another was equally unacceptable. Having normal and healthy human interaction distracts from the propaganda and gives people hope for their future so, of course, holding one's girlfriend's hand because it brings a sense of peace in the misery that the two share would result in punishment. If one is even accused of using consciousness expanding drugs, like weed or psychedelics, that would lead to almost constant mistreatment by the administration from that point forward.
I had a teacher who liked me and gave me good grades. He saw me smoking a joint at lunch one day, as I had done everyday before going to his class and preforming to his satisfaction. When I went to his class after lunch, he publicly chastised me for my "poor choices." He claimed that I couldn't be there because I was too "intoxicated" to do my work and he told me that I must stand outside during the class to wait for him to come out and lecture me. I left and never returned. If education had been important to him, he would have allowed me to participate, regardless of my personal choices, but that was not his concern. I was punished for not conforming to the approved image of an ideal student and nothing more.
Like many uses of force against people to gain their submission, the acts that were meant to prevent those outcomes often caused the feared outcomes. They do not allow students to defend themselves with with their fists when it is necessary which causes them to feel helpless when they are faced with real bullying or acts of violence against them. Those things simmer and brew under the surface and, every now and then, the victims decide to off themselves or go kill a bunch of other people because they are young, under a great deal of stress, and led to believe that they have no other options. The kids who are sent out of class for being high, just take that opportunity to go get more high (that's what I did). The kids that are punished for dating, will hide their relationships and no one will notice that they are not being safe about things until one of them gets pregnant or a case of syphilis.
Being kicked out of that class was one of the last straws for me. I knew that my work was good. Despite being bit rebellious, many of my teachers kind of liked me but now word had gotten around that I was a "bad influence." The instructors began to treat me differently and I saw what the problem really was. They didn't care how well written my essays were or that I was learning my history. They were only concerned about how submissive I was and I was unwilling to give them that submission. I stopped going and that was that. In retrospect, I missed a lot of fun social interaction with my peers but I still stand by that decision.
When I write these types of things, I usually like to provide some suggestion that helps to solve the situation but I don't have any answers this time. What worked for me is unlikely to work for everyone. Plus, I really don't feel right telling people that they should drop out because the crumbs of actual education that they do get are of importance to them. I don't have any kids and I am long past my own school years but if I was talking to a student, I would try to tell that person to understand that the authorities don't always act in his or her interest. I would tell the student that his or her school years are less important than he or she is led to believe and that he or she doesn't have to stress out about them as though his or her life depends on getting an A in chemistry. Finally, I would ask the student to never submit in his or her mind. He or she may not have the same option of leaving like I did but he or she could make an effort to not accept the message of obedience, even if he or she must pay lip service to it in order to graduate. That would not fix the problem. It doesn't address its source. However, it might give a kid an advantage when he or she is faced with the constant push toward submission and conformity and that slight edge may make their youth a little more bearable than it otherwise would have been.
Peace.
As a side note, I found this topic to be much larger than I had expected when I started writing about it. I tried to put things in an order that made sense and I found that I simply had to leave a great deal of things out to keep the length manageable. If you to found this post to be a little more "rambly" than usual, that is likely the cause. However, that also means that I still have material to work with so I may return to this topic (or at least some aspects of it) at some point in the future.
All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.