Anti-School

by Lord Revan Fett

The main thing about school is that attendance is mandatory. I'd want to go if I were given the choice, but when you're forced to do something and you know you're being forced, what fun can be gained from that? The only reason they let you get out when you're 18 anyways is because by then they'll have indoctrinated you with the state propaganda for so many years they think even the slowest will have absorbed enough to be obedient at work or in the military should they decide to leave. Not that they want drop outs in the military or anything, no they'd prefer college people, and why would they want that? Because traditionally college has been the time when people rebelled, if people join the military are they going to be more or less likely to rebel once they go to college, and will that increase or decrease the revolutionary vigor of colleges? I'd say less and decrease, and the government likes it just fine that way. The less Kent States the better.

Another thing I don't like about school is that it isn't really needed. In middle and perhaps even elementary school they had a program called Star Books, which is where the librarian put one or two little star stickers on the cover of books, students would check them out from the library, read them, then take a quiz on the contents of the book and if they got 80% or better on the test the student would get however many points as there were stars on the cover of the book. The students were supposed to get two or so star points every semester and some teachers gave you extra credit for going up to five. That's self learning-the school supplies the books like a typical library and supplies a place to take a quiz to make sure you know the rudiments of what you read but everything else is up to you. The way I figure it the government could put textbooks online or supply them to parents for cheap then students would have to read the chapters, do the work, go to an internet site or do a mail-in quiz to show they understand what was taught, and for every chapter they passed they'd get so many points, though in order to be fair you'd have to make the same amount of chapters in each book so people won't get more points than one another just because their main interests are in different subjects. After you get so many points you're considered to be the next grade level, it would be cheaper than things are now and the government could make it optional to do the work rather than threatening people with, you have to do it or else's. Of course there's that whole socialization thing so I suppose people could get together in groups of 3-10 every so often to discuss things or play so there's some of that. Not that any of that much matters since it's too late for me, the main point of this paragraph is supposed to be that so far as I can tell schools are really unnecessary and I can learn things on my own just fine without them should I choose to expend the effort to search the web or go to any of the bigger libraries.

Channel One is just seriously annoying. They supply the school with television sets, nice, but does the school ever use the television sets for anything other than Channel One? Not on a school-wide basis. The only reason they're good is that individual teachers now have television sets all the time to show movies to the students, is it good to have students watching movies all the time in school? I don't know about all the classes, but for the ones I take I'm pretty sure constant movies wouldn't be good. Why not just use government funds to buy a few television sets and then having the faculty share them? The only reason it wouldn't work is if too many movies were being shown by too many teachers in which case you know you have a problem. Also the news on Channel One lacks any kind of value and not only that but it's out-of-date good-for-nothing news too (any news they send is guaranteed to be several hours old at the minimum) especially when normal television news is supposed to send you live coverage as the news is happening, along with the advertisements which amount to blatant government sponsorship of consumerism and not only consumerism in general but the products of the few select brands that are permitted to send their propaganda to tens of thousands of school children and you get a program with absolutely no educational value. If the school really cared about educating its students on current events they'd make it mandatory to read the newspaper for fifteen minutes each day sometime after lunch when they get the new newspapers, or somebody could go to a news site and look up a bit of news and have all the teachers spend fifteen minutes discussing whatever that news was with their students. At least then there wouldn't be the endorsement of blatant consumerism.

Another bad thing about the school is all its restrictions and rules. The Study Hall teacher can't give passes to people, or worse yet people actually need passes to be allowed to go places during school. If a student wants to get out of a class it should be assumed that the student can take responsibility for him/herself and they should be allowed to enter or leave classes whenever they want. If noise in the hallways ever gets too loud sound-proof stuff can be added to the walls or the administrators can chase the noisy people outside where they can talk however much or loudly as they want without disrupting anybody, which brings up the point that we're not allowed to leave school currently without being considered truant which I obviously believe is wrong, students should be allowed to take responsibility for their own education and school shouldn't be compulsory. Going along with the passes idea is the ID cards, they're used for passes in Study Hall, to get into the library, and that's about it. What's the point of having them? Even if there were more than those two points I don't see why students can't be trusted to give their real names for anything they might need their names for without needing an ID card to let people make sure they're telling the truth about their identity. I suppose the library thing goes along with what I've been talking about; students should be allowed to come and go there whenever they want without needing passes or ID cards, it's not like the library has a lot of books to steal or anything. Last time I checked it had hardly anything.

More points about school rules are the dress codes. How any school could possibly be allowed to implement school uniforms is beyond me, unless the school was a private one. People are forced by the law to go to school, yet schools say they can decide what is right for you to wear or not while you're in their facilities. How is that not destroying my freedom of choice? You make me go someplace for eight hours a day and then you say there's certain things you can wear outside of school, yes, but here in school you can't wear any of these things. Then people aren't supposed to bring book bags or coats with them to classes because the school is so freakin afraid they'll shoot people, and they should be afraid, treat people civilly and they'll treat you the same, treat then like dirt and oppress them like you do and of course people will strike back. Nobody's born a slave, just go back to the 1700's and talk to southern slave owners and you'll know that when you try to make a slave of someone you're going to face backlash. Why is not wearing shoes against the dress code? If people want to go without shoes they should be allowed to go without shoes. The school's endorsement of shoe wearing goes along with it endorsement of Channel One as another of its blatant endorsements of consumerism. I said endorsement too many times in that sentence didn't I? Why is it mandatory to purchase an agenda? Is it a school textbook? No. All the agenda is, is an attempt by the school people to get people to be organized. I've always been organized just fine without an agenda, I find its purchase to be a waste of my parents money, a waste of locker space, and a waste of paper-the government's good at waste isn't it? Why are the doors of the school rooms locked? Are they afraid people will steal stuff from teachers? Do they trust students so little? I believe schools should maintain an open and unlocked door policy, where students are free to come and go wherever they want inside a government building such as a school. The DARE officer is supposed to be friends with students and get their trust, why should things be different for teachers?

I find the school organization rather repugnant as well. Is there really a need for school boards, principals, and administrators? Guidance counselors make the schedules for classes, perhaps not all of it since the principal has some say in the matter as well but putting them completely in charge and having them follow the requests of the teachers as much as possible concerning what classes they'd prefer to teach seems doable. The teachers then teach classes, the bell system is, or can be made automated (I don`t know much about how the bells work), if students aren't in class then the teachers just won't worry about teaching them. Students can go to lunch whenever they want, the cooks will order and cook anything they want and it could all work out just fine, if a little more chaotically, without any bosses laying down the rules. Its my belief that students would behave just as they always do even if there's no threat of any real punishments and perhaps they'll behave even better without all the negative reinforcement. Administrators aren't the real problem though, the real problem is that all the classes are taught indoors and there's that whole bell system and scheduling in the first place. If the building was torn down and a woods was placed in its spot with little clearings for each teacher and the teachers could just ask questions and answer any questions asked of them and teach any students that came along to them it would be best. Staying indoors all day is unhealthy and it would be good for students who don't get outside much to get outside during school, more positive reinforcement, and it would be more a special DeKalb thing which set DeKalb off from all the other schools and leant itself to creating school pride. After all, how can anyone have pride in a system that works exactly the same as the hundreds all around it? All schedules do is get people ready for work. Do students really need to spend all the beginning of their lives getting ready to work? School should be an adventure, totally unlike any other time in your life, not just a drudgery you need to do as a prerequisite to doing something else. Going with this whole idea, perhaps it would be for the best to scrap mandatory classes everybody has to take. If a student likes a particular subject and teacher he/she should be encouraged to go as far in that field as they want to go. What's the point of forcing people to take classes if they're not interested in them? They won't learn anything and no purpose will have been served.

Is it really necessary to have DARE in school? I'll grant that teaching people the harmful effects of various substances is crucial to allowing them to make informed decisions, but teaching people that drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, etc are bad seems to be more of a moralizing thing. It's up to each individual to decide whether something is inherently bad, good, or just plain unhealthy. The War on Drugs was a mistake and its cost has been millions of people serving jail time, higher prices for substances (which means greater profits for drug sellers), billions of dollars wasted by the government, and war in South America. Is it really worth it to bring such a failure to a classroom? Also, somewhat along the note probably goes security guards, cops, and metal detectors at schools. Distrust breeds distrust. Bring people with guns to schools and you're just giving other people more incentive to bring their own, and rightfully so, everyone has a right to defend themselves and if a person feels threatened by armed cops at a door it seems like it would be a right of theirs to bring guns to school as a means of protecting oneself.

My last point is Katie Sierra, just because I sympathize with her predicament and modern anarchist martyrs are so hard to come by. She wore shirts insulting the government's policies to school and wanted to start an Anarchy Club. She got suspended and sued the school for violating her right to express her political beliefs. I forget how it ended up, and I suppose this really goes with the dress code section but just the fact that schools discriminate against people, whether on political, racial, or religious beliefs (would Muslims be allowed to wear that head covering thing if they came to our school even though we have a rule against wearing hats? If they did wouldn't that be reverse discrimination?) makes me somewhat mad, but what else can one expect from government?

But what about the supposed benefits of the current school system? Benefits mentioned by friends were that going to school gave you the chance to have better jobs in the future, you could go to college after high school, parents would either kill or kick them out if they didn't finish high school, and completing school gives them a sense of achievement. Let's look at those.

First off, what is a better job? Different people have different thoughts on what exactly a better job is but since this is about people who go to high school and possibly college afterwards I'm going to assume that a better job means a job that pays lots of money, is inside where it's air conditioned, and since both of those could probably be fulfilled by factory work a better job would probably be what? An office job sorting paperwork? Lets call it managerial, as if that changes anything. Okay, so now we know what a better job is and we have to look at, why would anybody want a job that pays well, is inside, and involves managerial work? That's an extremely good question, and since I'm not one of those people I don't really know, but what I do know is how to criticize it. Lots of money first off. Why to get lots of money? I assume to buy lots of stuff, what else is it good for? Why buy lots of stuff? Because it makes life comfortable. Why do people want to be comfortable? Because it's the easy way and Americans evidently like doing things the easy way-witness the fast food restaurants. If a person is going to spend a third of his day sleeping, a third of his day working, what's he going to do with the remaining third? Stir up a revolution? No! If he can help it he is going to sit back, relax, and not worry about anything, which is why a better job is looked at so favorably-the more comfortable items you have the easier it is to relax and let things pass you by. Is that a good attitude for Americans to take? No! As Samuel Adams said, "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen," and Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing." Doing nothing but working, sleeping, and relaxing is no way for a true American to live, and a disgrace to our nation. It's better to live simply, abandon materialism (which does nothing but make a person complacent, docile, and anti-revolutionary), work the least hours you need to pay for what little food you should be eating, and plan revolutions to better secure our liberty like our founding fathers wanted, though this time perhaps we won't be so hypocritical and say we want liberty but place a government to safeguard it, that's just foolishness, perhaps we'll finally abandon governments and witness a time where people can finally be completely free. Wouldn't that be worth working for, instead of some business that's just going to support the capitalistic order, pollute, and generally bring greater degradation into the world?

As for the other two points concerning jobs-the inside bit and the managerial. I personally detest all white collar people. Ruling over other people who are actually doing the work, filling out paperwork, and generally being slowly suffocated to death by rules and regulations is no way for a human being to live. As for working inside-there's different funs for different ones. Some people like a more inside, sterile thing while others like a more outdoorsy, wild environment. If you happen to be an inside person I pity you, but there's little that can be done besides saying you should get out more and perhaps one day you'll realize that living with recycled air and water, closed walls all about, and people bustling all around is the surest way to give you mental illnesses and you'll abandon it. Good luck!

I can see where a person might feel a sense of accomplishment at graduating from high school or college but really, unless you're a bad student it should be a given for you that you can graduate and I don't really know how much satisfaction can be gained from completing a given. If you're a bad student, good for you, you don't thrive in a stifled regulatory environment, you shouldn't really care about graduating or not because quite basically the current school system is overrated and earning pieces of paper really isn't a very big thing for people with a more realistic view of the world and hardly worth getting hyped about, but hey, if you do get a sense of accomplishment from it and you're a bad student and you don't feel you could have gotten the same or more satisfaction from completing a goal more set in reality (like building a bridge or something) then I guess that's good for you. Is earning a piece of paper sufficient reason to waste twelve years of your life? It's up to you to decide really. I'd personally feel much greater a sense of accomplishment planning certain things and perhaps helping certain things go boom, but again, different funs for different ones.

What about parents killing you or kicking you out of the house if you don't complete high school? Personally I feel that anyone authoritarian enough to even threaten those kinds of things or make a student think they'd do those kinds of things is hardly a good parent and should be left in the dust as soon as possible. Perhaps you feel differently about it though. Is getting kicked out of the house a big deal? If it's the middle of the winter and you die of hypothermia then yes, but otherwise there's no real reason to get excited about it. I hope very much that you were planning on moving out anyways someday and having your parents kick you out should be looked at as a positive development and a progressing of your plans. If you don't know where to go now that you've joined the recently homeless I'd suggest moving south, if you plan on making the condition permanent, like you really should be doing, then a deeper south would probably be suggested, otherwise just a little bit, unless you're already in the South in which case I don't know what you're complaining about. Homes are pointless so far as I'm concerned, they cost way too much money, take maintenance, and generally when you're living in a house you're living beside other people who are just as much idiots as you must be. The protection they provide is more an illusion than anything-a robber who wants to come in will come in, and if a tornado wants to blow down your house it will-the only thing it really does is provide a storing place and a place with a good temperature. Wear enough clothes and the temperature won't really matter (what else are you doing with the money saved from not buying a house other than buying some good clothes) and the storing place you shouldn't need unless you're becoming a materialist on me but if you do and you don't want to leave your stuff lying around you can rent one of the storage containers for however long you want that some companies offer. I don't know much about storage things so I can't really help you there. As for your parents threatening to kill you or never talk to you, all I can say is that, it really and truly would be in your best interests to leave them as soon as possible. Really. A respected figure should know better than to be an authoritarian, if they don't you're too good for them.

What's left? College. Why go to college? For the same three reasons I listed above really. The same reason you finish high school is the same reason you go to college. It's hardly an end in and of itself. If you want to party there's cheaper ways of going about it than spending thousands of dollars in tuition, and if you want to pick up smart chicks it seems like it would be cheaper to go to the public library and wait by your favorite section until a suitable girl comes by. Not only do you know she can read and has somewhat of the same interests as you but she also likes to save money and borrow books rather than buying them and if she uses the libraries computer as well it means she likes to save computer and internet costs. Would you prefer picking up a spendthrift girl at a college who's spending thousands of dollars on tuition and probably will spend your little money in the same manner or a thrifty girl at a library? Otherwise the only reason to go to college is to learn, and really if you can find a big library nearby (or move yourself so it becomes nearby) or know how to search the net good, there's no reason you can't teach yourself. If you ever get stuck go to a college, find a person loafing around with a textbook about the same level you're on and get them to help you for free. Perhaps there's professors with some free time on their hands who are willing to help out a free spirit even if that person doesn't happen to be taking their classes or attending the college. If you want to learn something, you'll learn it. Just give it enough time, patience, energy, and curiosity and you're bound to succeed eventually. Seriously, is it better to know and to not have a diploma, or to stress yourself out, not remember much, and get a diploma?