Public Schools

School used to be an open and free institution where kids spent a few hours now and again in order to engage in free play and learn a few basic skills, like reading, writing and arithmetic. It was commonly organized around a school house built for this express purpose. The house itself was built with voluntary contributions, and a teacher was hired on the same basis. The job of the teacher was to oversee the free play, and aid in teaching the children basic skills.

There was little to no age segregation. Older kids would often teach younger kids what they had learned. The older kids would also look out for bullying. The teacher would merely oversee the activities, and make sure that everything was in order. The teacher would only perform a few hours of formal teaching a week. For the rest, children learned from each other.

All this ended with the advent of the progressive era, in which we still live. Public schooling was introduced, and children were obliged to spend their time in these institutions. The old school house was replaced with public school buildings that had an eerie similarity to prisons. Children were not allowed to come and go as they pleased. The factory bell was introduced, and children were segregated according to age.

There was no longer any room for flexibility when it came to schooling. Teachers had to be trained in their professions, and all teaching had to follow a curriculum created by expert bureaucrats. A single message was to be sent from the top of the hierarchy to every single child of the land. This message had to be repeated in various ways for many years before any child could go out into the workforce, properly prepared for a life of obedience and conformity.

The curriculum would be tweaked regularly by central bureaucrats so as to constantly conform to the latest fashion in politics. The school house would alter its form too over time, but the strange similarity with prisons would remain. Whenever prisons change their form, schools followed suit. When prisons became more open, with a less imposing architecture, schools changed in the exact same way. When the prison wall was replaced with a fence for low security jails, schools did the same. Low security prisons and schools have the exact same overall architecture.

With totalitarians again on the rise everywhere in politics, it should come as no surprise that schools are following suit. Today, children are forced to wear masks while at school. They are not allowed to look at each other. They are told to look straight down, and blindly accept the message broadcasted to them from the towers of power. That's not all that different from what we see in modern day re-education camps. Again we see that what happens in prisons soon find its way to public schools.

Guantanamo Bay detention camp

By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy - (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, Link