The Art of Defiance:

general guidelines for defying school
back to index page

why we go to school

purpose of schools

function of schools

guidelines to follow for school

why we go to school

We go to school because our parents or guardians make us go. Once you're old enough to realize this, you have reached the point where nobody knows the school system as intimately as you do. You're going there and experiencing it yourself, you know what it is like. At that point you can't let anyone advise you or tell you about why anything regarding school. Everything that teachers and parents think is good for you is flawed from the outset by the fact that they understand less about school than you do. Aside from technical facts, it is best to reject every single statement they make about school in its entirety. Notice how it is pure conformity, every word that comes out of their mouth. You must pretend that you are the first one to analyze schools in the whole world.

purpose of schools

The purpose of schools is similar to the purpose of life on the planet and of any organization in the world. It is to continue to exist tomorrow. The reason it exists is because it existed yesterday, and since yesterday nothing has challenged it, so it goes on existing. (Notice how much more logical this explanation is compared to saying you go to school to learn. If that was the purpose, we could remove over 99% of the existing curriculum on the grounds that it is irrelevant.)

Just as the purpose of natural selection works on plants and animals, just as they produce offspring year after year and become extinct when environmental conditions turn unfavorable, so do organizations, and so do schools. The truth of this statement is evident both from the huge body of empirical evidence (one can study any apsect of this world and observe that it isconsistent with natural selection and forces of competition), and from the fact that no one designs the format of schools. There are many formats for conducting a class, yet the lecture format of having a teacher stand in front and talk is by far the most common. That format, by the way, can be traced to the middle ages, when the first universities were born. At that point in time, the only means to transmitting information was to hand-copy the material. Logically, the most efficient method of hand-copying is to write it on the board where everybody can see. That way, hundreds of people can copy down the information simultaneously. It was a good idea then. Today it is just a tradition, with no logic to it.

The conformist will ask "How can we improve upon this?". There are two major reasons not to respond. One is that we do not want to bother with the details. Defiants criticize the whole of society. You see, we can implement a highly efficient transportation system that gets rid of pollution in major cities and uses up less resources. But what I'm wondering is whether it is necessary for people to get to places in the first place. So we don't want to start with the details. The same applies with schools. I doubt that they should be there in the first place. The second and more important reason is that right now, we don't want improvement. The beauty of the existing school system is that it is so incredibly inefficient and bureaucratic. The system does not have as tight a control over me as it might otherwise. (I'm a bit skeptical about this line of reasoning because it could be that our society is one of the worst possible, that every other society would generate more defiants. Perhaps if Hitler had won the second world war, this would be a much better world, I don't know.) In any case, the American school system is the best I know. It offers a great deal of flexibility and freedom. If you do it right, you can have a huge amount of free time. The severe problem with it is that it so effectively instills responsibility and initiative in students.

function of schools

The best explanation I can think of for the function of schools is that it serves to protect the social status and power of those who hold it. I haven't given this topic too much thought, as it seems mostly irrelevant to me in either deciding to reject schools or figuring out how. However, the four years I spent in college obtaining my engineering degree didn't make me learn a single thing I would use in my work (it sounds like a hyperbole, but I'm being quite objective), so one wonders what the practical effect of college is on students. Well, if I didn't need a degree for it, many people could get my high-paying engineering job. I believe if we educated a child from the start to fill my position and if the child likes mathematics, he (or she) will know enough by the time he is thirteen or fourteen, and would probably be cheaper to hire. Requiring a college degree makes me feel much safer in my job (not everyone has the money and time to attend college the and stamina to cram his mind with tons of depressively useless information), and I'm sure so do the college professors who get to keep their jobs.

guidelines to follow for school

(1) Don't listen to the teacher: If he stimulates more important thoughts than you'd have ignoring him, it is logical to listen. However, the only times teachers are interesting, in my experience, is when they recount personal anecdotes or express flawed opinions. I have always been able to get by without listening to teachers in classes. My personal attention span for their pointless prattle is only about 5 minutes, provided I make the effort to try listening that long.

(2) Always do the bare minimum to get the grade: If 90 points gets an A, get as close to it as is safe. Hard assignments that earn little points might be better ignored entirely. Routine habits, such as always showing up in class (even if attendance is not taken), usually makes you do extra work in the long run. You're not in class to learn. You're there to beat the system in the most efficient manner possible. The art of outsmarting the system is your entire education. If you have multiple goals in mind you're not doing it right, that's how conformists think. For you, there is a single goal, and no rules whatsoever. All subgoals have relevance only in furthering the ultimate one, so that all concepts of priorities, tradeoffs, and pros & cons are illusions.

(3) Don't ever take a class for the challenge: You are defiant. You don't need a teacher saying 'study this, do this' to motivate you to learn a subject. If the subject is of any interest, he will only limit your freedom in studying. If it is not, he will force you to stuff you mind with irrelevant data. You are not motivated by pressure. You are motivated by your own pure decisions, which no one can influence. And you most certainly don't need any of those teachers "who make you think". You are not made to do anything by anyone. I'm telling you, you never never want to take a class for the challenge. It is an act of conformity. The challenge is to defy, not to conform. Don't want what the conformists want. Don't try to excel at school (unless it takes insignificant additional effort). Any time spent alone is worth a thousand times the time spent conforming. For the same reason, don't join clubs or organizations. They don't matter. If you join out of curiosity and see that they are pointless, just get the hell out.

(4) Don't feel good about getting good grades: What is more disgusting than those teachers who make you think? It is students who feel good about getting good grades. I simply cannot believe my eyes when I see all these students respect the school system enough to believe that good grades are better than bad grades. Both are meaningless. If I try to fail a course and succeed I should probably feel better about it than if I try to ace it and succeed. Why better? Because failure is looked down upon by society. You have to counteract the negative feelings that society wants to make you feel by feeling good. Don't be indifferent or untouched by anything that society looks down on. It is not wise to assume that you are immune to society's influence. (In case you don't know, I made the same mistake myself many times and I've made all the other mistakes, too, in my life.) You have to fear society's influence because it is stronger than you, unless you achieve maximum defiance. And this means feeling good about the things that no one else will feel good about. Becoming a defiant is about programming yourself using emotional stimuli. If you simply resist emotions, suppress them, or don't feel any of them, you cannot be logical. Social forces are strong. Some humans are immune to a few, but overall humans must defy to escape them. Even if you are not human (for example, you could be an artificial intelligence many years from today), you probably under stand the point I keep making about resisting those ideas that reproduce the best, thereby flooding the market and finding their way into every intelligent being's mind.

(5) Set modest goals: Based on my experiences in the US, things such as a college's name and reputation are highly overrated. Moeny tends not to buy much in education, either. As a defiant, you should be more motivated around students who don't care about studying than in a tightly competitive environment. The easiest path is often the best. Aim for mediocrity and it shouldn't limit your career options.