Public education: Conform or die

Here in the supposed land of the free, I have been told my whole life that I have no right to be me. Freedom in this country is an illusion. If you conform to become who the government tells you to be, you are free to be that person. If you maintain any sense of individuality, it's painfully obvious that freedom is a myth.

I have numerous issues with the modern world. Although most of my concerns were developed separately from my educational beliefs, I have frequently found ways to connect such things as mass mindlessness and our plummeting rate of progress to public education. Can the United States devolving into a conform-or-die nation also be attributed to public education?

Before I go any further, I prefer not to refer to the process as public education. The process is not truly educational, and it is inconsistent with what is generally considered to be public. Schools are publicly funded, but so are prisons. Nobody ever talks about public prisons. Technically speaking, government-controlled schooling is a more accurate term.

I used to be a good student. I know what it takes to succeed in that environment. It's certainly not intelligence. There are reasons I now refer to that phase of my life as my stupid years. Success is about obedience to authoritarian figures and conformity to government standards.

I was close to government standards, but I was never 100%. I eventually tried to better myself. That moved me further from the mold. Although I never got along with my teachers, my teachers became absolutely hostile to me once I moved further from their narrow and rigid mold. Teaching could very well be the world's most intolerant profession.

Schools are not designed to meet diverse needs. Instead, they try to change their students to fit how they teach. This is not just me. There were signs that my teachers were harming other non-conformists.

Since my school years ended, I have seen signs that things are getting even worse. Some children need mental activity in their lives. They struggle with the mental inactivity demanded by the schools. This has led to an overdiagnosis of attention deficit disorder. In many cases, we are now chemically altering children to fit the government's mold.

What about private schools? Unfortunately, the government has way too much control over the private sector. The government has done so much to define how education works in America that private schools are modeled after government-controlled schooling. Instead of trying to provide the best education, private schools are trying to be a better version of the same model. The government has far too much control over general expectations, measures, accreditation, and what credentials mean to employers.

What about college? College is essentially an extension of the government's K-12 travesty. Like K-12 schooling, all students are expected to fit the same mold. If they don't, they are unlikely to succeed in that environment.

Even in the K-12 system, there are legitimate survival concerns. I have first-hand experience with assaults on mental health. There have been studies showing that the suicide rate among school-aged children tends to track the school year. I do not believe that's coincidence.

What happens when we are done with school? We live in a highly discriminatory society. Incompetent college graduates are consistently provided with better opportunities than even the most capable individuals who lack credentials. This means that it's much easier to succeed in life if you conform than if you maintain a sense of individuality.

Studies have shown that people with more schooling tend to live longer lives than people without. Most people interpret this as proof that schools extend life expectancy. There could be another explanation. Perhaps discrimination against non-conformists is lowering their life expectancy. It's difficult to isolate different factors. We are more likely to add ideas to increase life expectancy than to lose ideas, so the overall trend should be upwards regardless of the implications of educational discrimination. If we could isolate factors, I don't think there's any question that we are prematurely ending the lives of non-conformists.

There are many reasons that non-conformists struggle under this model. If you have money, you can make better selections for your life. This includes where you live and what food you eat. There are also mental health issues. If you live comfortably, you will be better off than those who are struggling. Some mental health issues can persist from your school years. I can honestly say that I never fully recovered from what my schools did to me.

I at least have mindless drone certification (as much as I hate admitting it), so I'm not getting the worst of everything. That doesn't mean that I'm not being harmed by the heavy-handed push for conformity. My biggest goal in life is to be me. I have yet to find a way to survive in the modern world as someone that I can respect. I have never had a job that hasn't required me to betray myself. I have lived the bulk of my life as someone I hate purely for the sake of survival.

This is not a free country by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps it's as free as it gets. After all, a lot of countries are copying our mistakes. That doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with our level of freedom.

Modern-day America has definitely devolved into a conform-or-die nation. Much like mass mindlessness and our plummeting rate of progress, there are plenty of reasons to believe that our schools are the primary driver of this problem. Government-controlled schools have clearly embraced a dangerous mindset. They are clearly insisting that we must either confirm or die.