One of the greatest lies we tell young children is that they go to school to learn.
At one point or another, the absurdity of compulsory schooling strikes most young children — not yet jaded by years of routine and dulling expectations — and they ultimately ask a parent, teacher, mentor, or older person, “why do I have to go to school?” Usually, the response goes along the lines of, “You have to go to school so that you can learn.” As children get older and become young adults, the explanation goes from kindly information to borderline coercive, “You have to go to school so you aren’t flipping burgers your whole life!” Something happens in these years that the focus — at least in what we tell children the point of school is — goes from knowledge to professional signaling.
There’s a real danger to telling young children that they must go to school so that they must learn. The exploitation of this danger is of paramount importance to inculcating a schooled mindset. It essentially goes like this:
“You must go to school so you can learn!” implies that not going to school means the child will not learn. Children, naturally both curious of the world around them and trustworthy of adults take this information to mean that, should they want to embrace the world around them and engage with it at a deeper level, they have to go to school in order to do that.
Only that that isn’t what happens. After several years of monotonous exercises, following schooling regimen to the letter, and associating learning with schooling, and schooling with the natural authoritarianism of the schooled setting, children start to resent learning itself.
This resentment only grows with age. As young adults, we begin to form our life-plans for ourselves and set ourselves on the path to what we want from our lives. Compulsory school becomes more than just an authoritarian day camp — it becomes an immediate burden to our ability to live our happy lives. It not only burdens us by taking up the time and energy from our lives, but deepens our resentment of anything that may formally be called “learning.”
This is the greatest lie because learning is at the core of our lives as human beings. We must learn to survive. We evolved a strong system to learn quickly and intuitively — play. But schools are the exact opposite of play. Play is spontaneously structured — or structured around rules that have developed over time — voluntary, and fun. School is centrally planned, coercive, and — for the vast majority of students — miserable. While humans are meant to associate learning with play (and therefore, the voluntary fun it brings with it), compulsory schooling replaces play with school and the dread it brings with it. It thereby stunts the individual’s ability to engage in learning as easily, and limits their ability to live out their life to the potential they may aspire to.
The coopting of the language of education by advocates of compulsory schooling in the 20th century was the greatest crime to learning committed in recent history. It was also the best thing that could possibly have been done for such advocates, as well-intending parents and educators now could not oppose their reforms, lest they be opponents of “learning,” too.
The first path to regaining control over education and learning is taking control of the language. If you are deschooling yourself, never let somebody tell you you’re not learning. Never let them get away with “how are you learning, then?” Rather, ask them, “You mean to tell me you spend 9 hours every day in the same building? Doing things other people make you? How do you learn, then?” Take control over the language just as you take control over your own education.