The Myth of Education

Darren Allen:

Education in the system means compulsory schooling in a world of artificial scarcity · · · Schooled activity stunts maturity, punishes experience, corrupts initiative and cuts the individual off from the world, making self-sufficiency and self-confidence all but impossible · · · The most schooled people on earth are generally the most stupid; the most heavily indoctrinated, the most insensitive, the most conceited and the most helpless.

The purpose of education is to socialise human beings into a life of complete institutional dependency. School teaches you that justice must come from someone in institutional authority, that meaningful activity must come from a ‘career path,’ that if you want to express yourself you must first gain access to centralised speech platforms,1 that if you want to do something, you must first of all gain a licence or a qualification and that, above all, your own desires and instincts are invalid.
General incompetence, self-alienation and permanent childishness is the purpose of education; indeed the stated purpose. The designers of the modern school were chillingly explicit about what school is supposed to do.2 Self-knowledge, self-confidence, peace-of-mind, sensitivity, spontaneity and autonomy do not figure; indeed they are existential threats of the highest order which must be repeatedly exterminated.

The purpose of education is to train students in techniques required by the market-system; managing large amounts of useless data, doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, doing things you don’t actually want to do, under extreme time pressure, for no better reason than because someone in authority tells you to, paying no attention to the world around you and unquestioningly accepting given myths. So called ‘objective’ exams fulfil this purpose perfectly, weeding out those who insist on doing things their own way, in their own time, without any need of overt coercion; although there are plenty of other ways that systemic threats and defective units can be identified. Inability to sit still, staring out of the window, refusal to do ludicrous assignments, hatred of authority, bunking off, asking the wrong kinds of questions, ‘inappropriate’ behaviour and offensive language are all grounds for suspicion, tranquillisation, ridicule, failure or expulsion.