I am surely not the first person to notice the growing similarities between schools and prisons: random searches, video surveillance, security guards, metal detectors, undercover snitches, even barbed wire. In a prison and especially a labor camp, one of the main ways the authorities maintain control is by enlisting the aid of the prisoners. This is done through selective granting and removal of privileges, and by using the strong to terrorize the weak. The strong and privileged have power among the other prisoners, but this power is dependent on the authorities.
Violent video games are actually another means of control. They channel the anger away from the tyranny of school into an imaginary, inconsequential world-inside-a-box. Blowing things up in a video game is no threat to the powers that be. If that fury were directed toward the system that shuts us up for twelve years of our lives, the system that humiliates us, confines us, and breaks our spirit, then that system wouldn't last long. The real purpose of schooling is to break our spirits, so that we will submit to the lesser lives the society of the Machine has to offer us.
The technologies of control implemented in schools (and prisons) bespeak the insecurity of the authorities. I remember when a girl in my high school started an independent student newspaper. The principal strode down the hallways, red in the face, brandishing a fistful of newspapers and shouting, "Who is responsible for this?!" Because school's main purpose is to make students submit, any hint that they are losing control fills the authorities with fear. "How to keep control of your classroom" is often a subtext of teacher training programs. And when control seems to slip, the response is always more control. Metal detectors! Drug tests! Chemical medication!
Imagine a pressure cooker that springs a leak because the pressure is too high, and rising. Is the solution to seal it up even tighter? You can do that for a while, but we all know the end result.
So people turn to "outlets" like video games, D&D, sports, etc. to vent their rage or express their innate desire to be magnificent. It is all practice for an adulthood in which you do an unfulfilling job because you "have to" (motivated externally by money just as grades motivate us externally in school), and in which you can only "be yourself" on the margins of life, the weekends, the vacations.
What kind of life is that?
Has anyone read the essay: "Grades, A Gun to your Head"? http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/index.php?p=16
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I am surely not the first person to notice the growing similarities between schools and prisons: random searches, video surveillance, security guards, metal detectors, undercover snitches, even barbed wire. In a prison and especially a labor camp, one of the main ways the authorities maintain control is by enlisting the aid of the prisoners. This is done through selective granting and removal of privileges, and by using the strong to terrorize the weak. The strong and privileged have power among the other prisoners, but this power is dependent on the authorities. Violent video games are actually another means of control. They channel the anger away from the tyranny of school into an imaginary, inconsequential world-inside-a-box. Blowing things up in a video game is no threat to the powers that be. If that fury were directed toward the system that shuts us up for twelve years of our lives, the system that humiliates us, confines us, and breaks our spirit, then that system wouldn't last long. The real purpose of schooling is to break our spirits, so that we will submit to the lesser lives the society of the Machine has to offer us. The technologies of control implemented in schools (and prisons) bespeak the insecurity of the authorities. I remember when a girl in my high school started an independent student newspaper. The principal strode down the hallways, red in the face, brandishing a fistful of newspapers and shouting, "Who is responsible for this?!" Because school's main purpose is to make students submit, any hint that they are losing control fills the authorities with fear. "How to keep control of your classroom" is often a subtext of teacher training programs. And when control seems to slip, the response is always more control. Metal detectors! Drug tests! Chemical medication! Imagine a pressure cooker that springs a leak because the pressure is too high, and rising. Is the solution to seal it up even tighter? You can do that for a while, but we all know the end result. So people turn to "outlets" like video games, D&D, sports, etc. to vent their rage or express their innate desire to be magnificent. It is all practice for an adulthood in which you do an unfulfilling job because you "have to" (motivated externally by money just as grades motivate us externally in school), and in which you can only "be yourself" on the margins of life, the weekends, the vacations. What kind of life is that? Has anyone read the essay: "Grades, A Gun to your Head"? http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/index.php?p=16