| The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling | | | | Standards of culture, morality, and behavior are |
| By Punkerslut | | | | inculcated in these blossoming minds. The first lesson |
| Some people are under the impression that brilliant | | | | asked us to believe in the orders of authority. The |
| minds will always supercede the potential of their | | | | second lesson asked us to work with each other to |
| institutionalized learning environments, causing them | | | | achieve the desired ends of those in control. If a group |
| serious conflicts. Few will doubt that brilliant minds find | | | | of children are taught to engage in the same behavior |
| intellectual constriction in all universities and mandatory | | | | regardless of their what they want to do, then they will |
| schooling. A genius cannot bear the pain of others | | | | never fight back as adults. This is your group of |
| fumbling with a simple subject. I doubt this theory; | | | | tenants who will live in roaches and never call the |
| rather, I believe that strict and required schooling | | | | health inspector. This your group of citizens who easily |
| sterilizes the potential for brilliance in our young. Those | | | | frightened by police officers into "voluntarily" giving up |
| who survived schooling and continued to think were | | | | their rights. Workers who are threatened by the idea |
| only the strongest of the will and the greatest of heart. | | | | of a union, readers who never question the angle of |
| All children at their start are tumultuous, curious, and | | | | the newspapers or the media, consumers who identify |
| highly experimental. This spirit can only die if it is forced | | | | the products they buy with their own lives. These are |
| into school. Mandatory schooling has never consisted | | | | the fruits of mandatory schooling. |
| of anything but the memorization of monotonous and | | | | The overseers of these once untouched youth are |
| dead facts, with training to master repetitious behavior. | | | | hardly free from prejudice, discrimination, and bigotry. |
| For the greater part of their day, the words of | | | | Children soon learn how to manipulate the system to |
| children's lips must match the interests of their school | | | | their personal advantage. The students who excel in |
| teachers. Their behavior must coincide with a set | | | | athletics and represent the school are naturally |
| policy and a set regulation. They cannot use the | | | | rewarded for their involvement. Those elected to the |
| bathrooms without permission. If they wish to speak, | | | | powerless position of school president are given |
| they must raise their hands; talking in order to speak is | | | | specific privileges. Even the academic and "scholarly," |
| restricted only to the class of adults. After every half | | | | college-bound group is easily pardoned for breaking |
| hour or every hour, a bell rings and everyone must | | | | the rules. But to the rest of the school, every law is |
| move. There is no point in the day where anyone asks | | | | harshly enforced with maximum punishments. The |
| the child: What are you thinking? What are your | | | | tone of a principal is like that of a warden: with no |
| worries? What are your plans? This daily grind | | | | check on their authority, they will always have a way |
| becomes a ritual for the child. It becomes the plot | | | | of using their coercive ability to enforce a standard on |
| background for their television shows and books, the | | | | the population. Whether it's a standard of reading the |
| ideology that is taught to them by teacher and parent | | | | prison-issued Bible and respecting the guards, or |
| alike, and finally, it becomes the verses for their | | | | whether it's your participation level in programs that |
| prayers. An entire mono-culture is developed, entirely | | | | benefit the school administration, a very strict and |
| directed at convincing children that submitting to their | | | | painful punishment awaits those who disobey an |
| authority is for their own best interest. "Believe us and | | | | undisputed, authoritarian force. There is no doubt that |
| support us... All of the good things you have today are | | | | an active student body reflects positively on school |
| because of us. Believe that." Mandatory schooling is | | | | administrators. Like factory floormen, they're fulfilling |
| the closest ally of oligarchy and oppression. | | | | their quotas to the inspecting superintendent of the |
| Their environment is similar to that of a prison: by the | | | | local school district. All school programs are directed |
| "population" lacking any ability to check the authority of | | | | towards the interests of the school and those who |
| the warden, their grievance process becomes a | | | | engage in unsanctioned assembly or association are |
| matter of rubber-stamping. It is always "subject to our | | | | strictly punished. In West Virginia, a student was |
| rules, our means of investigation, and judged by us." | | | | suspended for fifteen days for wearing a T-shirt that |
| Naturally, without any democratic control of their | | | | read, "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children |
| community, students, like inmates, will attack and | | | | on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national |
| brutalize each other. School shootings, gang violence, | | | | security. God Bless America." She also had been |
| bullying and hazing. The youth's violence problem is | | | | promoting an unauthorized club, the Anarchist Student |
| directly related to the fact that they have no control | | | | Union. [*1] In Michigan, 2003, a student was suspended |
| over their entire lives; the only control they can have is | | | | for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt for the words |
| between each other. Mandatory schooling will only | | | | "international terrorist." [*2] It is ironic that the |
| produce a society of children who are either terrified | | | | administration is allowed to use these words, in fact, all |
| of the tyranny of others or have been raised to | | | | officials are encouraged to use fear-based politics to |
| perpetually exploit the condition of others. As in the | | | | achieve their ends. At the same time, those who |
| prison system, the child's presence in certain buildings | | | | criticize the ruling administration are classified as "a |
| and their engagement in state-regulated behavior is | | | | threat to the general public," and removed from the |
| under penalty of imprisonment. An entire army of | | | | system. That is the reality of mandatory schooling. |
| truancy officers have been hired to make sure that | | | | Even the Parent-Teacher Association and other |
| there is no child on the other side of the bars. With this | | | | national organizations in the United States are |
| forced-cohabitation, abuses will only become a daily | | | | supportive of mandatory schooling. There is nowhere |
| occurence. The minister in A Clockwork Orange is | | | | for the child to turn. Their culture must be developed in |
| known for one remarkable bit of wisdom... | | | | the company of their fellow students, against an |
| "...the wretched hoodlum the State committed to | | | | invasive curriculum, cruel professors, and a world that |
| unprofitable punishment some two years ago, | | | | has accepted forced schooling. What at first was a |
| unchanged after two years. Unchanged, do I say? Not | | | | bitter, disgusting pill that we suffered through becomes |
| quite. Prison taught him the false smile, the rubbed | | | | something that we feel must be forced on others -- |
| hands of hypocrisy, the fawning greased obsequious | | | | and so it happens, that those who graduate probably |
| leer. Other vices it taught him, as well as confirming him | | | | learned only one thing through school: if it weren't for |
| in those he had long practiced before " | | | | compulsory education, people can't learn anything. |
| At the end of eighteen years of coercive, state | | | | Truancy officers are the final realization of this cultural |
| authority, the child is released into the world. "Now that | | | | idea of forced education. The state will fold its arms |
| you're trained to do as you're told, you can be free." | | | | and turn away when the children in the nation are |
| The produce of these schools, this state-controlled | | | | homeless, on the streets, and suffering from |
| manufacturing operation, is willing to submit, to obey, | | | | malnutrition and hunger. But the moment the child does |
| and to listen. Civilized members of society can only | | | | not appear in school at the scheduled time, the police |
| truly develop when they are allowed access to | | | | are alerted; soon, both the child and the parents are |
| everything they need. Mandatory education is | | | | usurped by the law. Billions of tax dollars are spent on |
| incompatible with this idea. Forced behavior, which | | | | this corrupt, ailing system of "modern education," when |
| technically amounts to a type of slavery, will only | | | | even the most basic of human needs is not met for |
| inculcate a mindset of fear and terror. | | | | the citizen. It is as absurd and inefficient as it is cruel, |
| Curriculum. You need to be somewhere at a set time. | | | | inhumane, and unjust. Until the abolishment of |
| Either at the orders of an authority or a bell, everyone | | | | mandatory schooling, the child will be brought up as a |
| in one mass shifts to another position and another | | | | slave to become a slave in adult life. |
| place to engage in a new activity. It is a training not just | | | | Punkerslut, |
| to follow instruction, but it is also a training follow a | | | | Sources: |
| certain behavior in cooperation with those who share | | | | 1. "No anarchy club in Kanawha County, WV," by Dana |
| the same condition as us. Rules, regulations, and laws | | | | Hull, San Jose Mercury News Staff Writer, Published |
| are set out for the children. You can to this to others. | | | | January 24, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News. 2. |
| You cannot do this to others. This is acceptable. This is | | | | "Michigan school bans student's anti-Bush T-shirt," by |
| not. We are taught to cooperate with one another. | | | | The Associated Press, 02.19.03. |