COLUMNS – School as an Historical Institution by Ljubodrag “Duci” Simonovic, renowned Serbian philosopher and writer.
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School as an Historical Insitution by Ljubodrag “Duci” Simonovic
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Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
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School as an Historical Institution
Let’s talk about school as an historical institution. School is just one of many historical forms of upbringing and educating the youth – just one form. School itself is an oppressive institution and it always corresponds with the ruling order. School is used as means for the ruling class and not for creating revolutionaries and people who will create the future. It is used for the creation of loyal subjects and in that context, it isn’t creating critical but positivist consciousness.
It creates consciousness that should make the youth accustomed to the existing world and to destroy the will in them to create a new world. I repeat, school has always been a repressive institution. The so-called “school reforms” are possible only in the technical sense. In essence, the point is not to create a new school but to create a society of mindful and free people in which the upbringing will be the base of everything, not through the institutional level through schools but above all through society, through libertarian-fighting sociability and creative sociability which should upbring the youth.
The youth should be brought up and educated by the dominant way of life which develops creative universality among the youth and among people in general. At the same time, they are socially engaged beings from an early age leaving out the hierarchy and the ones who create areas of education and the hierarchy of power which is projected onto the educational system in which the children act only as the “receptors” so to speak and where there is a structure, professors and school programs etc. All of that has been determined.
If children want to get good marks, they have to adapt to such a mechanism because loyalty is the prime condition for someone to finish school and that means loyalty to the ruling order. This is embodied in professors and in the entire school system.
It is a mistake to equate the educational and upbringing system with the school system. It is a big mistake! School is an oppressive institution and in the future it should cease to exist as such. There should be one libertarian educational and upbringing system which would be based on people as mindful and free beings.
School doesn’t encourage the creative spirit at all. It wreaks havoc on man’s creative being. The creativity of today is creativity in a technical sense. It’s a productive principle.
The ones who control the school system and society, try to adjust the school to the so-called “technical civilization.” The humanist heritage of the educational system is being completely destroyed although it did somewhat appear within the school system.
From the youth, they are creating people who are adjusted only to the mechanism of technical innovations without talking about humanism at all. Humanism is completely rejected. This is in context of destroying the so-called traditional humanity and creating the so-called “new man” who will compete with machines as Stephen Hawking says and will be some kind of cyborg. That is actually a challenge to the youth, to be intelligent and not mindful because intelligence seeks to solve problems, but mind seeks the truth. What the school system is trying to prevent is the effort of the young people to reach the truth and the truth in its essence is not only the freedom; the truth has become survival. When we talk about the school system today, we have to talk about it in the context of capitalism becoming a totalitarian order of destruction. In that context, school appears to be bringing up the youth for such a process and for them to become part of the mechanism of the destruction of the world instead of creating libertarian and existential consciousness which will reckon with capitalism and create a new world where a rational relationship with nature will be established and in which spiritual wealth will be the measure of human wealth.
That is what is being completely rejected. School has just become part of that mechanism – including television, computers and the entertainment industry. It became a part of the destruction of the humanist heritage of humankind and of the humanist heritage of national cultures. Since school is based on technocratic civilization, it belongs to the globalist story which means the destruction of national identity and libertarian dignity which is based on the struggle of nations and people for survival.
Everything should be adjusted to global trends enforced by large corporations which control states and the whole educational system as is the case with the Bologna Process. Bologna suits the concept of the destruction of national cultures and humanist heritage and the creation of a technical civilization. Bologna is a typical example of the destruction of everything that is humanist which was created throughout civilization.
The ones in power are doing everything to show their loyalty to the order, to which the children have to show loyalty as well. The children can’t act differently than everyone else around them. It is brainwashing and destruction all in the form of some kind of progress which actually isn’t progress but rather progressiveness. That means there is quantitative criteria in question and there are no esthetics or anything libertarian. Libertarian and existential thoughts should prevail taking into consideration the rate at which the planet is collapsing. Therefore, if anything should be developed among the youth, it's the ecological consciousness but not the ecological consciousness in the sense of “throw the garbage in the garbage bin” but in the sense of developing ecological consciousness to reckon with an order that is destroying life on the planet. Look at sports education. They have removed physical culture from schools and introduced sports education which is actually education for a technical world.
It’s now about the instrumentation of the body and complete reckoning with man as a human and a natural being. Wherever you turn, you see the sports story being implemented where conflict between people dominates and fanatical mechanisms of the destruction of the body – and man as a whole – dominates. There is no mention of the humanist heritage of physical culture at all (like with Vasa Pelagic, for instance) or through the folklore and other forms of dance which enable man to be a social, cultural and erotic being. There is none of that. It doesn’t exist. The speed at which the emancipatory consciousness of people has been removed is simply unbelievable. School has become a monstrous order which is efficiently destroying the will for freedom and the will for life amongst the youth.
All of the aforementioned details explain how school is blending with the commercial mechanism more and more. “Money doesn’t stink” is the slogan for said mechanism where everything is mediated through money through the logic of profit.
School cripples people that are creative, mindful and libertarian beings and in that way it of course participates in creating the character of the young people who seek an escape. If school really was to become an institution that gives the youth the opportunity to find themselves to develop real values then they wouldn’t escape to drugs, drinking etc. They wouldn’t do that since they wouldn’t have a need for it. They would find themselves in school, among their friends and professors. It would be a real challenge for them and they would strive to go to school because it would be a spiritual workshop where they would find themselves. Since school is an oppressive institution however, they are looking to escape from it as soon as they can. When class was cancelled, we were all happy. You were happy when there was no school.
It should be the exact opposite. Schools should be open practically 365 days per year and 24 hours per day for children. Many retired professors or young unemployed workers could participate in such a program to a great extent. Instead of creating police squads, wouldn’t it be more logical to develop a system of upbringing the youth which in turn will give them a chance?
The money which is not spent on education and the upbringing of youth will be spent on fighting crime, on police raids and so on. Ten times the amount! This was calculated in the West, not by myself. Each dollar which doesn’t get spent on education gets at least ten dollars to be spent on fighting crime – not to mention the social atmosphere which is being created. It is one complete failure. The ones in power and the others who will come after them, have the goal of keeping the youth obedient through the school system, through sports stadiums and all other social institutions which have an oppressive and class character. That is the point of the story! Professors should be the people who are committed to children, especially today when the kids are being destroyed whichever way you turn. For years, I have been fighting for school to be an institution which will be open 365 days per year and I’ve been fighting for it to be a spiritual workshop for the youth. A spiritual workshop! Why aren’t the ones in power taking care of that? For example, every school should have the possibility to have a part of nature dedicated to it which it will cultivate, create ecological maps and so on. Every school should be twinned with a village where it could help the households with an aged population. That would be enormously important for the development of the youth as human beings, to love their country and to get close to nature. As it is now, they are completely out of the social context, through school as well. Simply put, idiots who will serve some capitalist thug out there – and ultimately serve the order which is destroying life on the planet – are being created out of kids.
There are so many good things that could be done without any investments. I tried to make some contacts and do something regarding this idea while my wife was director of the First Belgrade Gymnasium. But nothing could be realized, not a single idea and even more so today when everything has become the logic of profit. Only on the basis of one strong social-political movement is it possible to create one new system of education, and in that context, gradually reform the school to become one truly social institution which means that society should become the base for education and for the upbringing of the youth. Society, people – life! Upbringing and education of the youth by life itself! Nietzsche forced this idea of education by life itself but for the aristocracy and for the new nobility. Here it is not about making some kind of elite, but rather that this idea should be applied through the parental environment, through the living environment, through society itself. As our great poet Branko Miljkovic said, “The poem will be that which ennobles. Where one stops singing, the other will continue and every word will deserve to be a poem.” I always talk about an image of birds flying towards the future or of a society as a “flock of people” flying into the future. That is the romanticism after the French Revolution with Schiller, Klopstock, Goethe etc. Klopstock talked about the “wings on legs” and about the flight towards the future. I am not for such romanticism which doesn’t have a political dimension or the struggle against what is evil and destructive, but a man has to have vision of the future and an optimistic relationship towards the future. This has to develop the feeling among the youth that they can achieve it if they fight for it and that the moment of struggle, togetherness and closeness is the foundation of everything! There lays the most important moment of education as well as upbringing, which is to achieve self-confidence through your creative activity, through creative work, through contact with other people, to see your human figure in other people! That will be an enormous challenge for the future society!
Through my work, I am trying to get education to not be separated from upbringing as is the case with sports where upbringing without education dominates which is the biggest fascist mechanism. Everything should be related to one another, which was well understood in antiquity that a work on one’s body is at the same time a work on one’s spirit. It is important to struggle to humanize and spiritualize the existing world and to create a world of spiritual people, not in the sense of an escape, but in the sense of development of authentic human characteristics that provide a person with the ability to constantly overcome the existing world by becoming a human – for man to be the measure of all things as it was said long ago.
It creates consciousness that should make the youth accustomed to the existing world and to destroy the will in them to create a new world. I repeat, school has always been a repressive institution. The so-called “school reforms” are possible only in the technical sense. In essence, the point is not to create a new school but to create a society of mindful and free people in which the upbringing will be the base of everything, not through the institutional level through schools but above all through society, through libertarian-fighting sociability and creative sociability which should upbring the youth.
The youth should be brought up and educated by the dominant way of life which develops creative universality among the youth and among people in general. At the same time, they are socially engaged beings from an early age leaving out the hierarchy and the ones who create areas of education and the hierarchy of power which is projected onto the educational system in which the children act only as the “receptors” so to speak and where there is a structure, professors and school programs etc. All of that has been determined.
If children want to get good marks, they have to adapt to such a mechanism because loyalty is the prime condition for someone to finish school and that means loyalty to the ruling order. This is embodied in professors and in the entire school system.
It is a mistake to equate the educational and upbringing system with the school system. It is a big mistake! School is an oppressive institution and in the future it should cease to exist as such. There should be one libertarian educational and upbringing system which would be based on people as mindful and free beings.
School doesn’t encourage the creative spirit at all. It wreaks havoc on man’s creative being. The creativity of today is creativity in a technical sense. It’s a productive principle.
The ones who control the school system and society, try to adjust the school to the so-called “technical civilization.” The humanist heritage of the educational system is being completely destroyed although it did somewhat appear within the school system.
From the youth, they are creating people who are adjusted only to the mechanism of technical innovations without talking about humanism at all. Humanism is completely rejected. This is in context of destroying the so-called traditional humanity and creating the so-called “new man” who will compete with machines as Stephen Hawking says and will be some kind of cyborg. That is actually a challenge to the youth, to be intelligent and not mindful because intelligence seeks to solve problems, but mind seeks the truth. What the school system is trying to prevent is the effort of the young people to reach the truth and the truth in its essence is not only the freedom; the truth has become survival. When we talk about the school system today, we have to talk about it in the context of capitalism becoming a totalitarian order of destruction. In that context, school appears to be bringing up the youth for such a process and for them to become part of the mechanism of the destruction of the world instead of creating libertarian and existential consciousness which will reckon with capitalism and create a new world where a rational relationship with nature will be established and in which spiritual wealth will be the measure of human wealth.
That is what is being completely rejected. School has just become part of that mechanism – including television, computers and the entertainment industry. It became a part of the destruction of the humanist heritage of humankind and of the humanist heritage of national cultures. Since school is based on technocratic civilization, it belongs to the globalist story which means the destruction of national identity and libertarian dignity which is based on the struggle of nations and people for survival.
Everything should be adjusted to global trends enforced by large corporations which control states and the whole educational system as is the case with the Bologna Process. Bologna suits the concept of the destruction of national cultures and humanist heritage and the creation of a technical civilization. Bologna is a typical example of the destruction of everything that is humanist which was created throughout civilization.
The ones in power are doing everything to show their loyalty to the order, to which the children have to show loyalty as well. The children can’t act differently than everyone else around them. It is brainwashing and destruction all in the form of some kind of progress which actually isn’t progress but rather progressiveness. That means there is quantitative criteria in question and there are no esthetics or anything libertarian. Libertarian and existential thoughts should prevail taking into consideration the rate at which the planet is collapsing. Therefore, if anything should be developed among the youth, it's the ecological consciousness but not the ecological consciousness in the sense of “throw the garbage in the garbage bin” but in the sense of developing ecological consciousness to reckon with an order that is destroying life on the planet. Look at sports education. They have removed physical culture from schools and introduced sports education which is actually education for a technical world.
It’s now about the instrumentation of the body and complete reckoning with man as a human and a natural being. Wherever you turn, you see the sports story being implemented where conflict between people dominates and fanatical mechanisms of the destruction of the body – and man as a whole – dominates. There is no mention of the humanist heritage of physical culture at all (like with Vasa Pelagic, for instance) or through the folklore and other forms of dance which enable man to be a social, cultural and erotic being. There is none of that. It doesn’t exist. The speed at which the emancipatory consciousness of people has been removed is simply unbelievable. School has become a monstrous order which is efficiently destroying the will for freedom and the will for life amongst the youth.
All of the aforementioned details explain how school is blending with the commercial mechanism more and more. “Money doesn’t stink” is the slogan for said mechanism where everything is mediated through money through the logic of profit.
School cripples people that are creative, mindful and libertarian beings and in that way it of course participates in creating the character of the young people who seek an escape. If school really was to become an institution that gives the youth the opportunity to find themselves to develop real values then they wouldn’t escape to drugs, drinking etc. They wouldn’t do that since they wouldn’t have a need for it. They would find themselves in school, among their friends and professors. It would be a real challenge for them and they would strive to go to school because it would be a spiritual workshop where they would find themselves. Since school is an oppressive institution however, they are looking to escape from it as soon as they can. When class was cancelled, we were all happy. You were happy when there was no school.
It should be the exact opposite. Schools should be open practically 365 days per year and 24 hours per day for children. Many retired professors or young unemployed workers could participate in such a program to a great extent. Instead of creating police squads, wouldn’t it be more logical to develop a system of upbringing the youth which in turn will give them a chance?
The money which is not spent on education and the upbringing of youth will be spent on fighting crime, on police raids and so on. Ten times the amount! This was calculated in the West, not by myself. Each dollar which doesn’t get spent on education gets at least ten dollars to be spent on fighting crime – not to mention the social atmosphere which is being created. It is one complete failure. The ones in power and the others who will come after them, have the goal of keeping the youth obedient through the school system, through sports stadiums and all other social institutions which have an oppressive and class character. That is the point of the story! Professors should be the people who are committed to children, especially today when the kids are being destroyed whichever way you turn. For years, I have been fighting for school to be an institution which will be open 365 days per year and I’ve been fighting for it to be a spiritual workshop for the youth. A spiritual workshop! Why aren’t the ones in power taking care of that? For example, every school should have the possibility to have a part of nature dedicated to it which it will cultivate, create ecological maps and so on. Every school should be twinned with a village where it could help the households with an aged population. That would be enormously important for the development of the youth as human beings, to love their country and to get close to nature. As it is now, they are completely out of the social context, through school as well. Simply put, idiots who will serve some capitalist thug out there – and ultimately serve the order which is destroying life on the planet – are being created out of kids.
There are so many good things that could be done without any investments. I tried to make some contacts and do something regarding this idea while my wife was director of the First Belgrade Gymnasium. But nothing could be realized, not a single idea and even more so today when everything has become the logic of profit. Only on the basis of one strong social-political movement is it possible to create one new system of education, and in that context, gradually reform the school to become one truly social institution which means that society should become the base for education and for the upbringing of the youth. Society, people – life! Upbringing and education of the youth by life itself! Nietzsche forced this idea of education by life itself but for the aristocracy and for the new nobility. Here it is not about making some kind of elite, but rather that this idea should be applied through the parental environment, through the living environment, through society itself. As our great poet Branko Miljkovic said, “The poem will be that which ennobles. Where one stops singing, the other will continue and every word will deserve to be a poem.” I always talk about an image of birds flying towards the future or of a society as a “flock of people” flying into the future. That is the romanticism after the French Revolution with Schiller, Klopstock, Goethe etc. Klopstock talked about the “wings on legs” and about the flight towards the future. I am not for such romanticism which doesn’t have a political dimension or the struggle against what is evil and destructive, but a man has to have vision of the future and an optimistic relationship towards the future. This has to develop the feeling among the youth that they can achieve it if they fight for it and that the moment of struggle, togetherness and closeness is the foundation of everything! There lays the most important moment of education as well as upbringing, which is to achieve self-confidence through your creative activity, through creative work, through contact with other people, to see your human figure in other people! That will be an enormous challenge for the future society!
Through my work, I am trying to get education to not be separated from upbringing as is the case with sports where upbringing without education dominates which is the biggest fascist mechanism. Everything should be related to one another, which was well understood in antiquity that a work on one’s body is at the same time a work on one’s spirit. It is important to struggle to humanize and spiritualize the existing world and to create a world of spiritual people, not in the sense of an escape, but in the sense of development of authentic human characteristics that provide a person with the ability to constantly overcome the existing world by becoming a human – for man to be the measure of all things as it was said long ago.
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School as an Historical Institution by Ljubodrag “Duci” Simonovic
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· Column & Photographs: Ljubodrag “Duci” Simonovic / All rights reserved.
Copyright © Ljubodrag “Duci” Simonovic ·
Copyright © Ljubodrag “Duci” Simonovic ·
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Last updated on September 19, 2018.
Published by Urban Book Circle on August 23, 2015 Urban Book Circle® (UBC) |
· Photo of Samuel Beckett’s bookshelf in the study of his apartment at the Boulevard St Jacques in Paris
courtesy of John Minihan / All rights reserved 1985. Copyright © John Minihan ·
courtesy of John Minihan / All rights reserved 1985. Copyright © John Minihan ·
· Edited by Djuradj “George” Vujcic, Danijela Kovacevic Mikic and Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic ·
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
· Illustrated by Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
· Illustrated by Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
