Some Thoughts on Education from an Anarchist Science Teacher Doing the Shit Job of Crushing Dreams and Reproducing Hierarchy (c. 2017)
Siddown Shuddup
I’ll admit it: I’m basically Science Cop. Ruler Cop who measures kids’ progress against an arbitrary alphabet of milestones, Cop Cop who sends them to detention. I hate it. Children are flowers, and Cops are not Gardeners. Cops are Cops.
“When will I ever use this in my real life, Mr. Butts?”
“are you going to be a scientist or a doctor?”
“no”
“Then never. You will never use this in your real life.”
“Then why don’t we learn about something else?”
“Because the Industrial Revolution demanded a competently literate and work-acclimatized batch of 18-year-olds every year to compensate for the rapid turnover in human bodies that factory work caused. This is why school is regimented, hierarchical, and oriented towards discipline. And because the United States has placed an emphasis on STEM to compete with historical enemy superpowers in decades old space- and arms-races. This is why you’re learning about mitochondria. And because our society needs a place to put you while your parents go to work. That’s why you are compelled to show up.”
“oh. Can I go pee?”
“no.
… sorry”
I want to be Gardener, Anti-Cop Butts. And I don’t want to be Mr. Butts, I want to be Teacher/Learner/Facilitator/Friend Butts. Let’s think about how we can fix this garbage! Let’s think about the world we want to create, and let’s look to anarchist principles to guide our thinking.
If Not School, Then What?
Learning! Growth! Community! If not school, then organic person-becoming!
How does an anarchist society ensure that its kids are capable, complex, and competent adults? By allowing them to practice and practice and practice their curiosity and agency. Kids are curious, they love asking questions and hearing the answer. If there’s no answer to be heard, they love making a game of finding it. Adults are no different, except that most adults have had their curiosity and sense of play curb-stomped out of them.
Zillions of children now and throughout history have grown into healthy adults without sitting at a desk for hours a day. Most of your ancestors, from your lowly serf ancestors to your powerful warrior ancestors, lived and died without having sat in different rooms in a building from 8:00 to 4:00. Somehow, they were able to function.
So, what takes over the role of the school, and why is it important that schooling as we know it be abolished?
Family: School robs kids of a relationship with their family. As a kid, I saw my family for a few hours each day after school, and I’m lucky. Many don’t see their family for weeks at time, because the idiots who built our world thought we should have night shifts and 8-hour school days in the same damn society. As a result, many of us know our parents only marginally better than we know our teachers and disciplinarians. This removes the bonds of knowledge that transfer from old to young, and replaces them with stilted dinnertime talk about crushes and bad grades. For all the whining that centroids and fascists perform about the degradation of the family, they’re certainly intent on preserving and intensifying the toil and regimentation that kills any chance of a filial bond.
Libraries and Library Types: Each community that is serious about learning (for kids from 1 to 92, as the classic Christmas tune says) should have a well-maintained library attended to by avid readers, obsessive researchers, and the fastidious types who bust a load at a well-organized shelf. There should be friendly regulars all around who can point a wandering mind in the direction of books on medieval armor, the history of sex work, or DIY small appliance repair. The library should be a communal space of learning, teaching, and reflection, built with plenty of nooks for quiet study and coffee lounges for overcaffeinated discussion and debate.
Content Experts: The world is full of people who know so fucking much about one or a few things: master craftsmen, history buffs, theory nerds, gardening enthusiasts, mad scientists. If you’ve ever been cornered by one of these brains at a party or bar, you know the teaching impulse can be ferocious! Maybe you’re the one doing the cornering! Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of hunting down some poor fuck you know will humor you about your encyclopedic knowledge of timber-frame construction, you instead had a gaggle of children, teens, and adults ready to take chisel to wood under your guidance? Our content experts are kept locked away in for-profit institutions building idiotic contraptions to kill brown kids or publishing idiotic papers behind exorbitant paywalls. If we can liberate the farmer from the factory farm, we can create more farmers, and if we liberate the academic from the college, we can create more researchers.
Social-Emotional Experts: The social-emotional expert is someone who is particularly empathetically sensitive, kind, and patient. They are someone who has committed time to studying the crafts of psychology and friendship. A social-emotional expert might find work around the commune facilitating meetings, guiding a dying comrade through a final psychedelic experience, or mediating in a restorative justice session. These types could be asked by a coalition of parents and community members to make themselves available to the young ones during their times of playing and learning, or to simply babysit when the adults are wrapped up in a necessarily child-free action. They might also be sought out for advice and help by the children themselves. These are the ones who will most closely resemble the Teachers of the pre-anarchy, administering social wisdom via Socratic questioning and patient sympathy. The primary role of the SEE would be to guide the youth’s understanding of justice, freedom, and fairness, and to empower them with the soft skills needed to navigate conflict resolution and consensus decision making. They will encourage a free spirit, but one that does not domineer the spirit of their fellow kids. We’re not raising cops!
The Abolition of School
School is awful and boring. It’s mentally, physically, and emotionally taxing. It’s almost entirely useless. It’s deadly. Schools, especially American schools, are infamous for the suicides, assaults, sexual harassment, and mass killings they create. And of course they are: sending a vulnerable 16 year old to a day-job that they don’t see any use in, giving them no time to pursue their interests, minimizing their social and emotional development in favor of a parade of useless facts… It’s enough to drive anyone insane. What’s more, we’re robbing our society of the potential for a citizenry of self-actualized and happy geniuses. We’re churning out beaten down automatons who have been trained for their entire childhood and adolescence to crave the boss’s obscure rewards and fear his detentions. Each year’s thoroughly conformed and alienated graduating class is helplessly enculturated into a world of domination: they have been taught to dominate or to be dominated. With a few generations of this method of education behind us, it’s a wonder there’s any joy, creativity, or freedom left in our laughably stuffy and sad society. To move beyond this, to undo the damage that has been done, we must abolish the school and renegotiate our understanding of learning, growing, and becoming.
It Takes a Village: A Glimpse of Education Utopia
A child wakes up in the village. It’s about 10 AM, a little later than their usual waking time of 9ish. They spent the night catching glow-bugs and playing video games with their friends, so missing the sweet summer morning is their consequence.
Dad didn’t leave them any breakfast, so the child waddles into the kitchen, where their grandmother is idly painting a portrait of a bird. While the child prepares themselves some eggs, they listen to their grandmother explain how expensive paint used to be, which makes the kid wonder about how stores used to be run in the old times.
After eating, the child pulls on their shoes and makes their way to the library branch, intent on learning what it was like to shop in a store. Once inside, they go in search of a leisurely adult, one who wouldn’t mind helping them find some materials. In this village, it is understood that a child’s questions are to be respected, and their curiosity sated, even if that child is not one’s own. They find a woman they’ve talked to before, she’s sitting at a table in the coffee lounge sipping her hot drink and reading a book on genetics.
They greet one another.
“what are we looking for today, little one?”
“My grandma said that they used to sell paint in stores. Do you know what it was like to buy something at a store with money?”
She looks pensive for a moment. That’s not something there’d really be books on, such a simple, assumed thing. Maybe a scene from an old movie? Or…
“Why don’t we play store? I think that’d be the best way to show you.”
“Can we play store with some of my friends?”
“absolutely!”
Children are gathered, most are around our child’s age. Twigs are distributed as money, and they all take turns “buying” books from the woman, who role plays as the book merchant. It’s all fun and games until one child, a burly boy who has yet to master the fine art of sharing, snatches a valuable-looking twig from his neighbor, eliciting plentiful waling. The game is paused, and the woman rushes in to assist in the emotional cleanup. The children gather around to comfort the victim, while the woman asks the boy why he did what he did. Through a few carefully placed questions, she guides the boy to an understanding of what he did. Both parties say what happened and how it made them feel, and sticks are returned to their rightful owners. The conversation isn’t over yet, however. The gaggle of children have questions.
“can I sometimes take something someone’s using if they’re going to hurt someone with it?” “in the old days, could I skip the line and just take a book?” “why not?” “were all the money sticks the same size in the old days?” “If I took someone’s money stick in the old days could I still use it to buy books?”
The impromptu lesson is interrupted by an adult. Our child springs up and races towards the man, encasing his leg in a big hug. It’s about 2:30 in the afternoon.
“Hey kiddo, me and meemaw were about to fire up a movie and make a little late lunch. Are you all done here, or would you like me to come find you later?”
“yes! Let’s go!”
Back home, the family is gathered around the little screen, chopping carrots and watching an old movie, a bank heist thriller. This, obviously, complexifies some of what had been learned that day. The movie is paused, rewound, and played several times as the child’s constant questioning unveils more and more of the history, economics, and sociology inherent in the old property relations. Several times, notes are made for follow-up research, as dad and meemaw are themselves developing queries.
That night, our child is too tuckered out for much play. They fall asleep face-first in a library book about forest animals. Tomorrow will be another day of learning and growing.
