For many of us in Europe after hospitals, the school is the first institution we encounter and contend with in the first years of our lives. Apart from those who attend nurseries and kindergarten, our parents are mandated by the state to enroll us in primary school at around the age of 6. Depending on the country’s legislation, school is mostly mandatory until the age of 16/18. That’s 10/12 years of sitting at a table absorbing what is deemed knowledge which we will then have to vomit back on pieces of paper to be labelled “educated.”
The first time when I questioned whether being educated meant being smart was in my 4th or 5th year in elementary school. My former history teacher would brag about how smart one student in another classroom was. She was called in to show off her intelligence by going over a lesson. But all she did was repeat the words of the book ad verbatim (let me show off too). She had only learned the paragraphs by heart. That, to my teacher, was being a good and intelligent student. To me, it meant being a parrot.
Schools and teachers have never taught me to be a critical thinker, or a thinker at all. I was downgraded when I questioned things that were taken for granted and proposed alternative interpretations. All my teachers wanted was to stick to what the book said.
It’s been 10 years since I left that world, but I am reminded of its dangerous limits by my younger siblings.
First of all, whenever they get reported I ask them to tell me more about the teacher. We know that some of them target students regardless of the situation. Secondly, I ask them if they give others preferential or different treatment. Third, I listen to their version and remember my days as a student. As adults, we’re very unfair to younger people. We expect and demand from them what we, as grown-ups, can’t do. We scold children for “talking in the classroom” where they spend most of their days with their mates as if we could keep shut for 8 hours at work, in a factory, or office.
“Schools and teachers have never taught me to be a critical thinker, or a thinker at all”
After my sibling received a report and the reaction from my parents, I sat down and thought through what was being taught. He was told that he is chatty in the classroom and our parents told him not to entertain his classmates even if they needed help and to let them be because that would be a disadvantage for him. Here are the implicit teachings:
- Individualism: each student for themselves. School grades students individually, and you have to do all that it takes to get good grades even if it means leaving others behind to fend for themselves.
- Solidarity is punished: The “talkativeness” often comes from aiding your fellow mate to keep up with the lesson. Teachers see it as a disruption and will report you for being chatty and distracted. Parents will often double down and ignore the reasons reminding you not to talk (this also contributes to the culture of silence).
- Distrust: The teacher, as the authority, will instill seeds of discord among students who are each other’s peers. Student A is not going to talk to student B anymore (or way less) because they got punished because of them. On the other hand, student B will think twice about helping the former when the tables turn for fear of punishment too and as payback.
- The authority has power and shapes reality: teachers decide who is misbehaving and don’t care much for context. They can tell whichever version of the story they understand often without being questioned by parents.
Another insidious aspect is how much control teachers have over students’ body autonomy. They are the ones deciding when students can go to the bathroom. After 10/12 years of asking permission to go the loo, becoming Bezos’ slave and watching him time how long you stay in the toilet becomes less outrageous, and the ability to push back is less strong as the conditioning will have been complete.
Schools really teach us to fit into the capitalistic mold of society, to bow down to authority, and to blame the individual instead of the system. If a student gets bad grades, it’s their fault, not the classroom configuration which is not equipped to serve different types of people, talents, skills, and intelligences. How is this different from blaming homeless people by calling them lazy instead of capitalism, high cost of living, etc…?
“We leave school as unarmed passive recipients of pieces of information that were never meant to make us critique the world. Quite the opposite as the goal is to make us meek, submissive, and powerless zombies”
In order to condition us into becoming good slaves of society, the school, its architecture, and functioning have to mirror that of other prevalent institutions: the factory, which feeds off of our labor and time, and the prison which does pretty much the same but with more emphasis on liberty restriction and punishment.
All three institutions use bells to give time-based orders (entry, break, exit). They limit our freedom of movement because you can’t leave the classroom, workstation, or cell unless permitted by an authoritative figure or the bell. And in some schools, like factories and prisons, you wear uniforms. In extreme cases like in the UK and in the US, there is a physical presence of the police in schools.
By the time you’re out of school, getting into a working rhythm isn’t so unfamiliar (the exception being the absence of long holiday periods). Schools emphasize theory over practicality and detach us from life, community, and real consequential issues. I may know or remember who Paris and Hector are, but how am I going to fill out this paperwork at the post office?
We leave school as unarmed passive recipients of pieces of information that were never meant to make us critique the world. Quite the opposite as the goal is to make us meek, submissive, and powerless zombies.
After the news that Birmingham City University is shutting down the undergraduate Black Studies course, we have to remember that schools and universities alike will never provide us with the tools to destroy them and the oppressive apparatus they provide theory and justification for.
Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I suggest everybody read it so we can seek and spread knowledge and education that liberate.