The Antischoolism of School-Survival.net
"All people found guilty of being born are sentenced to 12 years of hard labour without bail." ~ SoulRiser
If one were to ask me to name a website which fascinated me, I would be apt to reply with “School-Survival.net” (which I will now refer to as “School Survival”). Created by a female who goes by the name “SoulRiser,” School Survival was founded in 1999 and serves to educate readers on antischoolism. It is written primarily but not exclusively for children dissatisfied in traditional schools, seeking to sympathize, support, and inform them. In a 2006 interview published on the site, SoulRiser explains her original conception of School Survival:
“What specifically drove me to start School Survival was actually the private school I was in from grade 9 to grade 12. At first (in grade 9), it was amazing. It wasn't like the "school" that I had known. Everyone treated me with respect and even the work was interesting (or at least taught in the most interesting way possible). But the school changed over time, and the teachers started to give in to pressure from the parents about their kids' grades and how "sloppily" they wore their uniforms. The school slowly started becoming more and more like the regular public schools, and I was immensely saddened by this. It made me so frustrated every day, to watch these teachers I used to have great respect for, throw away their principles in order to impress stuck-up people and to make more money. That is why I needed a place to vent.”
Now advocating against traditional forms of compulsory schooling, the website features a blog and an archived MyBulletinBoard forum, in addition to numerous informational and argumentative webpages; the latest activity on the website, at the time of writing, is on the blog, where three posts are dated as being published on August 13, 2021. The blog has various contributions from writers focused or related to antischoolism, although the contributions are not always representative of the site’s specific views in every matter.
While identifying itself as “anti-school,” the website’s author repeatedly tells her readers that School Survival is advocating for education and learning. Instead, criticism is directed at traditional schools, particularly the common favoring of memorization in favor of internalized understanding, the regular ban on self-directed (freely chosen) education, and school culture in general. As stated on the website’s “Anti-school” page:
“School doesn't give students just about ANY choice of what they would like to learn about, or HOW they would like to learn it. In fact, it's gotten so bad, that every time someone mentions the word "learn", people instantly think of "memorize". … Memorizing is NOT the same as learning!”
Antischoolism, as defined by School Survival, is often rightly seen as rebellious in various Western circles, and therefore has received reduced coverage and credibility. The image of a lazy child in high school complaining about the unfairness or uselessness of school may come to mind to some readers. However, is there merit in antischoolism?
The lynchpin of the antischool argument is not that it is hard to learn at traditional schools; rather, antischoolism claims it is actively unfavorable to achieving long-term understanding and subsequent synthesis of ideas. The synthesis of ideas is the “usefulness” of knowledge, which serves as the sales pitch of what all schools offer—schools offer to provide the means for students’ ends, with modern schools tending to have the addition of a certification, degree, or diploma—terms which are largely synonymous—for the purpose of proving to others, notably peers and employers, of one’s capabilities.
Most if not all schools and tutors position themselves as selling a method to improve students in specialized aspects, so pupils might ultimately improve themselves in the common aspects the brand advisor Dan Koe calls the interconnected “four eternal markets”—health, wealth, relationships, and happiness (mind). One may recall the popular American sentiment that one must attend various traditional schools from childhood throughout adulthood to achieve enough money to obtain a “good life;” the notion is directed chiefly towards the “wealth” eternal market.
School Survival considers traditional schools to be exaggerating their importance in assisting students in reaching certain goals (“facilitating student development”). SoulRiser states in the aforementioned interview:
“If schools could be considered more as places one can go and do research and receive guidance as needed or requested, instead of places you go and receive rigid instruction, then I think they would cater both for people who want to do things their own way, and people who want to be guided a lot more.
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It's quite possible that there are circumstances where it would be better or easier [to learn] if done in a classroom with supervision, but I think that approach will never be able to cater to 100% of the students in the class. Learning in a classroom context with supervision is not a bad thing in itself, so long as if a student wants to pursue it on his own instead, he can do so.”
School Survival advocates for an increase in educational freedom, and a reduction if not removal of the archetypical Western compulsory schooling model. What is seen as the ideal situation of schooling is plausibly Nietzschean in will power, where individuals are beholden more responsibility in facilitating their own personal development in the four eternal markets. Persons in antischoolism are seen as having an innate ability to be able to succeed in furthering themselves by their own, individually selected means, instead of being solely dictated or directed by those around them, who may not understand or may not promote the learner’s best interests and goals. As written in Walter Kaufmann’s English translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Life is a well of joy; but where the rabble drinks too, all wells are poisoned.”
School Survival also directs criticism at traditional schooling’s focus of rote learning and quizzes as being an accurate sign whether a person is capable of long-term synthesis of specific knowledge—it discredits class tests as an indicator that conscious understanding is likely to be retained in the future.
“You listen to a lesson, you do some exercises, you are given a test. In order to pass the test, you must memorize information - this is often done by following elaborate "learning methods", none of which are really much more than ways to trick your brain into remembering things it otherwise would disregard. Some people actually remember some of this information later in their lives - especially if they happen to go into a career that's somehow related to it. Most people, on the other hand, don't remember much more than 20% of everything they ever learned at school - including the skills needed for reading, writing and working with numbers.”
Test grades, which can only evaluate the person in specific aspects as they are in the moment, are only reflective of the current moment; a redundant statement, I’m aware, and it serves as context for antischoolism’s view on the typical quiz. School Survival suggests that mandatory tests’ scopes, which are limited to the present (including the students’ emotional and physical states), are inadequate for representing the overall understanding that one has gotten from any given lesson in the long-term; if the primary goal of schooling is to learn in the present for both the present and future, or only for long-term improvement, it is questionable to solely use quiz scores as a predictive means on whether a student has reasonably “mastered” a subject for their future. The means are too narrow for the desired broad end. However, I doubt School Survival would claim it to be questionable to use tests as challenges to see whether one consciously remembers and, at times, understands the topic(s) at a single given moment—to evaluate the person’s understanding at the time.
Elsewhere, there are more aspects of antischoolism beyond the domain of School Survival. One such example, which appears to also be in alignment with School Survival’s views, can be found on SoulRiser’s personal blog.
SoulRiser
The last marks of the digital life of SoulRiser, apart from her blog posts on School Survival, appears to be on her personal Twitter account, where on July 13, 2021 she Retweeted a post against the Judge Rotenberg Center’s employment of Gradual Electronic Decelerator shock devices. While School Survival’s Twitter account has Retweeted a quote attributed to Bob Ross, on June 19, 2022, I am unsure whether the profile is or was run by SoulRiser.
SoulRiser’s other web projects include an inactive personal blog and a defunct website dubbed Mindality, the latter described on its Membership webpage as “a community site for unconventional people. … People who think/feel/function differently.” Mindality, along with having a community forum and pages of quotes, hosted articles by various authors advocating for self-employment and antischoolism.
One Mindality post on generating passive income is by SoulRiser in 2018, where she mentions she doesn’t have a traditional job, having found monetary success in creating websites for herself and others; whether she still lives off of the currency obtained through her online work, I do not know. She does not claim it will be a quick journey, writing in the article “it can be a long term journey to freedom.” The story reminds me of Oliur, a man who first found online financial success by designing, creating, and monetizing websites and “digital assets,” such as Tumblr themes, for himself and others.
On her personal blog, SoulRiser has written about her unpleasant childhood experiences in schools. In one article from 2019, she elucidates both her personal feelings and arguments against school, focusing on how her trust was increasingly broken by the consequences of sharing her genuine thoughts. In addition, she identifies her involvement with pre-university schooling as “traumatic,” where she supports the claim with her accounts of memorable events.
“I learned that I’m in this all alone, and can’t rely on anyone for help, especially not anyone with authority: those are the most dangerous people of all.
There was this one awful teacher in grade 1 who was basically a bully. One time she dragged a boy by the ear so hard that his ear ripped open and was bleeding all over the place. … I think it was grade 7 when we had another teacher who had a whip that he enjoyed hitting kids with also, usually for minor things like forgetting homework or whatever. I can’t remember anything specific he did though, but I remember being afraid of him. … To this day, I still have absolutely no clue how people can adjust and function in a school. It boggles my mind. It still feels absolutely insane to me, but at least I now know that the problem is not me, and never was.”
By having less than stellar role models, young SoulRiser was put into an intellectual position where either the authority figures were correct and she should emulate their behavior in adulthood, or reject their practices and disassociate herself from them to seek something greater. She chose the latter. Adult SoulRiser identifies herself as having been part of the group of kids who never wanted to go to school. Evidently, she learned to become an avoidant individual while at a school in her experiences with bullying students and authority figures.
“I learned that the less people know about me, the better. … Anything I say can and will be used against me at any random moment. …
The one time I did try telling people about a problem at school, it just made it worse. … The trouble with me hanging out with people during school, is that the monsters [i.e. bullies] would pick on anyone who dared to be associated with me.
So at some point I told my parents about the drama (I don’t remember why – maybe they asked?), and they talked to a teacher about it, and the teacher talked to the class…. aaaand that just made everything worse. Then there was even MORE drama. … How dare I tell someone how stupid they were being. The horror. My bad, I’ll never tell anyone anything ever again.”
Progressively increasing alienation from the persons in one’s life rarely encourages individuals to be outgoing, although it may serve as a catalyst to self-improvement—the examination and experience of bad role models, when identified by an individual as “bad,” gives one an inverse example of how to act if the individual wishes to be seen as “good,” if only in their mind at times.
Interestingly, SoulRiser recounts her college schooling experience in a more positive light, writing “I met some awesome people” in a local hostel.
“… I’d go visit them in their rooms… but I never wanted to stay all that long, just in case I annoy them. They can’t possibly want me around that long, surely?
This one time while I was visiting a friend there, I started feeling like I was overstaying my welcome, and kind of left abruptly, and he got this sad look on his face and was like “aww, leaving already?” … Maybe I actually wasn’t really bothering him at all. Wow.”
While she mentions having had good experiences with fellow students and teachers alike in her pre-university schooling, SoulRiser relates that she learned in school to hide her feelings and go with the crowd, to avoid punishment from her peers and authority figures.
Denigrating someone consistently whenever one begins to share their thoughts, intentionally or not, often leads the disparaged to view sharing as a necessary evil; with relationships being composed of sharing ideas (viz. communicating), the individual who avoids sharing their thoughts in general will frequently avoid establishing and maintaining meaningful (“genuine”) relationships.
A heart closed to sharing is closed to expressing both love and hate, which is an inverse love, although a person may first lean towards announcing a hatred when another prods them into expression. In the final chapter of The Four Loves, Christian author C. S. Lewis discusses how a closed heart entrenches itself in its own personal hell, preferring a predictable and familiar negativity over potential and unknown improvement:
“I am a safety-first creature. Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘Careful! This might lead you to suffering.’
To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. … Would you choose a wife or a Friend—if it comes to that, would you choose a dog—in this spirit? One must be outside the world of love, of all loves, before one thus calculates.
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There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. … The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.”
Intentionally providing motivation to persons, be it in school institutes or otherwise, to suppress themselves conclusively (viz. conform) to avoid social punishment is not conducive to improving any individual—it is conducive to lessening every individual. It is a sentiment echoed by SoulRiser throughout her websites in her critiques of both legally and socially coerced attendance, curriculums, and grading in traditional schooling.
With societies being the composites of individuals’ expressions, is the pushing of individuals strictly towards achieving common accomplishments truly of greater value than the standardizing of self-expression and lifestyles? Should culture stagnate?
I consider SoulRiser’s and School Survival’s antischoolism to contain valuable criticisms against various forms of schooling, including homeschooling when it is strongly influenced by traditional schools. The push towards preselected and sanctioned lifestyles seen as a means of perpetuating society, even if as a necessary evil, is actively against the development of the individual into the great and therefore seeks to detain the advancement of society.
Scientific advancements were regularly made with the embracement of the unorthodox and ridiculed. Spiritual and mental health is frequently increased by encountering and undergoing the uncomfortable. In my estimation, advocating for the standardization of human life often impoverishes the person and their society in the long-term.
If you are further interested in constructive criticisms of traditional compulsory schooling, I suggest reading the compendium of lectures by an American teacher, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, which supports a view of antischoolism while summarizing a history of American schooling. I personally own the 10th anniversary edition, but you can currently buy the 25th anniversary edition on Amazon through this affiliated link. You also can discover more of SoulRiser’s work at SoulRiser.net. If you enjoyed or gained from this article, let me know! Thank you for reading; have a good day.