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~| School Like Communism or Fascism? |~

In a way, school, especially state school, is like communism.

In school, everyone is equal. You mix with people from different classes and backgrounds. You all study the same subjects, are given the same tests, are straitjacketed in the same uniform, are sat behind the same desks and do the same work. The teacher is constantly forced to dumb down her teaching to the level that the most incompetent in the class can understand. That is the nature of school.

Some schools, including mine, have a motto which the entire class must stand up and recite at every lesson. Is this not a form of brainwashing? Is this not a form of thought control, of drilling into students certain principle which they may or may not agree with? Is it not a sinister form of public prayer, of worship, with the worship of the abstract principles of the school replacing the worship of a God, or the worship of the state, and in some cases where the school is a state school, the worship OF the state?

In school, if one person misbehaves, the lazy teachers punish the entire class for the wrongdoing of a few. Collective punishment is visited upon all students because of the misbehaviour of some students. The teachers are too incapable of rational thought to work out that perhaps they should single out the people actually playing up, and target them for public punishment, so that the rest of the class will behave itself. Instead, collective punishment is visited upon the whole class, to the detriment of those who have come to learn, with the culprits feeling little incentive to behave because they can drag their mates into trouble with them.

Instead of praising, uplifting and encouraging the more able students, false praise and sycophancy is given to the undeserving, the lazy and the ignoble. It is the responsibility of teachers to drive the industrious, bully the indolent and frighten the feckless. Instead of giving glory to the more able students and putting them at the head of the class, mediocrity is encouraged and consolidated.

Then there is the school as fascist. School in social terms is basically an extension of particular fascist principles. For example, in school, the charismatic and witty students quickly gain popularity, followers, and, by extension, power, which they can use to terrorise the rest of the students that prefer to be themselves, which try to distance themselves from the mindless herd, and be their own person. Self-determination is completely eliminated due to the crass, populist mentality of certain big cheeses that emerge within the student fold. Bullying occurs as a result, and their victims are those that refuse to conform with the tyrannical system of oppression and conformity visited upon them by bullies. Fascism, which glorifies terror, violence and power, as well as the worship of charismatic leaders, occurs within school. And, as children, psychologically speaking, are less developed and pretty much up there with animals, the best place to see the raw development of natural human characteristics and the natural development of human beings is school.