When we previously examined the relationship between school and prison as two aspects of a systemically coerce system of how states operate, we examined how it was that the state itself was seeking in school as well as prison, and every other social institution, to reward compliance and punish rebellion. Indeed, we may see that in human life, the sort of coercion that people must endure depends in large part on what is necessary to regulate them and keep them under control. People are who self-motivated can pursue largely petit bourgeoisie aims of entrepreneurship and the ownership of small property that does not attract a great deal of attention from big companies or the government, with resulting minimal involvement with burdensome and intrusive states and their systems of coercion. Those who require mild external restraint can handle school and work life profitably under some degree of direction that need not be too intrusive. But to the extent that one is relatively ungovernable, unproductive, and simultaneously without self-restraint, one will tend to find oneself intimately involved with the state’s institutions of law and order on all levels, depending on the nature of one’s activities. This may mean dealing with homelessness or the restrictions caused by receiving a great deal of government aid that surrounds one with spies and informers, or it may mean dealing with prisons and probation officers. Those who fail to respond positively to the relatively gentle coercion of schools will have to deal with the far harsher coercion of prisons.

There is a good reason why it is that schools have such a pride of place when it comes to coercive institutions. It is very possible for a child to grow up completely unaware of the coercive power of the state until they reach school. If a child grows up in a reasonably competently managed home that is able to handle its own business, with help from an extended family if necessary, children do not grow up being familiar with agents of the state. Church attendance and parents’ other activities may seem relatively social, and the loving care one gets form parents, other family members like uncles and aunts and cousins, or neighbors and babysitters, may not feel at all like coercion. To be sure, there can be a great deal of coercion within churches and other social institutions, which must always maintain discipline among their members and leadership, as well as within families and neighborhoods, but this coercion need not be felt, as a great many children can grow up under such a light hand from these institutions that their sense of freedom does not at all seem imperiled by belonging to the rudiments of a community of blood, geography, or faith. That changes quickly when one goes to school, where one must navigate a world that is far more coercive to those who stand out.

This coercion shows itself in many forms. For one, the education system given to children is wildly different from the highest forms of education that one finds much later in graduate school. Early education is all about learning supposed facts in a wide variety of textbooks, facts that one finds out later on are far more nuanced than may first appear to be the case. A great many books are written exposing the lies that are told by history and biology textbooks, and these lies seek to teach kids in certainties where one only finds debates, arguments, and speculations at higher levels of education where one sees the people behind the curtain and the uncertainty upon which knowledge is based. For another, the school system is remarkably rigid in its approach to children, and where individual education plans are provided, it is a sign of a failure of the student to be able to keep up with the norm rather than a personalization of education that seeks to give an advantage to someone whose knowledge and interests are ahead of the pack. Those who come to finish their work far faster than others often face a great deal of boredom in dealing with slower classmates, and may be positively discouraged from seeking to fill their time in more autonomous and self-directed education through immense reading, as this gives them an unfair advantage over their classmates in terms of knowledge and also may allow such children to read things that their teachers have not themselves read and approved for their use. Other students often resent the success of more intelligent students and may seek to stigmatize and bully those who make them look bad, a habit that begins in the school but may continue long into adult life. That said, wise institutions recognize those who are able and loyal to their aims of learning, and such people are without too much difficulty often co-opted into institutions as keepers of and sharers of knowledge with others because of their own fondness for acquiring it, so long as they are seen as being loyal enough to those institutions.

Indeed, it is little surprise that schools have always been a battleground for people with very different ideas as to what sort of social identities should be forged within them. In the United States, for example, for many decades there were parallel education systems for whites and blacks in many states, especially (but not only) within the old Confederacy. Even in the contemporary education systems of many countries there are different forms of education with different status, as people compete for spots in subsidized public universities where those of higher achievement can learn for free while those who are not able to pass entrance exams find themselves paying for education in private institutes that prepare them for a less academically rigorous and more professionally focused education. Still others, even less academically inclined, find themselves pushed towards unskilled labor or technical trades that offer considerable economic benefits without the academic pressures of the university. Many paths, ranging from owning a farm or a small business, being a self-directed tradesman, or engaging in independent research and creativity, fulfill complex needs for people to be free of external constraint while working out as much as possible of their own lives. At times, even the language that schools are taught in is evidence of the conflict that exists between different forms of education, as governments struggle with the divide between public schools, homeschooling, private schools, and religious schools, or about whether lessons should be taught in a national language like English or Spanish, a “regional” language like Catalan that may be associated with a secession movement, or a prestige foreign language that offers students opportunity to leave one’s home country for a better life abroad.

The relationship between freedom and education is often highly ambivalent. It is often necessary to attain a high degree of education before one is allowed to research subjects of one’s own personal interest. Nevertheless, those who have a great deal of patience and a high degree of skill in mastering what is taught by others can find a great deal of freedom within education to use the tools of learning and instruction to investigate subjects that are far outside of official interest but that may be of great personal importance. At times this research and investigation may be of interest to others and may filter through articles and books to a wider population. It is far more common, though, for people to quickly be bored and frustrated with learning what is of no interest to them and of no seeming relevance, and to seek freedom from education rather than freedom through it. A great many people, for example, seek to flee from mathematics, especially when arithmetic is followed by algebra, trigonometry, geometry, probability and statistics, calculus, and even higher levels of math. Others may struggle to master languages with their grammar and vocabulary, as well as the higher arts of creative writing and speechmaking which are based on these basic building blocks. People of an artistic or mechanical inclination will often seek to flee from a general academic life to one which nurtures their specific interests and to some extent insulates from them less congenial areas of study. Others with wide intellectual interests may struggle to balance their competing interests in ways that are profitable to them and which allow them the autonomy to seek after widely disparate fields of knowledge without being burdened by the tyranny of economic pressures. Freedom may be sought in any number of ways, but it is often elusive no matter what path one takes.