Me versus school.

 I govern myself; at school, I’m commanded to learn from others. I create cosmologies; at school, citizens are what they want to manufacture. I reject fame; at school, token medals and certificates fly through the air. I prefer stillness; there, an endless rush and scrambling reign. I am independent; at school, rules and molds try to keep me within certain labels. I am free; at school, goals and expectations are piled on until they’re internalized. I see “education” itself as fundamentally filthy; at school, they regard learning as a “source of knowledge.” I recognize the inner world as the only authority; at school, I am expected to fear the officials. I yearn for genuine connection; at school, there are only social games and gossip. I see originality as a sign of reality; at school, difference is a sign of “concern,” resulting in the “interventions” of guidance counselors. I am as deep as the ocean floor; at school, my headache grows from the endless giggling over hollow topics. I am sworn to individualism and the revaluation of values; at school, only primates exist, having copied family and social values wholesale. I flourish with love; yet at school, the environment is institutional, a place where even the smallest action can have serious consequences. I worship silence; at school, there is only noise and sound, and the longest silence in an entire day lasts at most ten seconds. I admire art and philosophy; at school, suffocating mathematics and even useless, boring chemistry facts are drilled into you like a parrot’s chant. I dream of nature; at school, fluorescent light drills into my eyes, and flat, colorless concrete walls mock my creativity. While I sing praises to being without a profession, in school there is no question asked except “what will you be?” Because my inner world is richer than the outer one, the outer world becomes unreal, yet at school they try to force me into that type of person who is “social and outgoing.” While I cloak myself to prevent my passions from being stolen, at school, every spiritual feeling is turned into a career and made material. While I think about how to escape compulsory schooling and military service, at school, nationalism and patriotism—the only allowed ideology—are instilled compulsorily. I am obligated to hear again and again knowledge at school that I already learned years ago by myself, while everyone stares blankly at it as if seeing it for the first time, and whoever grasps even a tiny portion of it is considered the most knowledgeable. I learn freely, yet at school I am seen through limiting lenses such as “visual learner,” “auditory learner,” or “social learner.” I see myself as stateless, yet at school nothing is offered outside the portrait of the country’s founder and its flag hanging at the head of the classroom, and a crowded swamp of theory entirely set by the state’s wishes. I overflow with abstract and inner insights, yet at school only heaps of concrete and physical facts are recited again and again. I am forced to act as though I take seriously this dump of ignorance where neither a person nor a thing speaks to my interests—this is the ground from which my lasting emotional and intellectual disappointment grows. And countless others...