The Damage Education Does
Dr Vernon Coleman
Our exposure to toxic stress begins at a very early age. It starts in earnest the moment we attend school for the first time.
We are taught to take education seriously. We are told that our education will shape and govern our lives. We are told that if we work hard at school and at college we will reap the benefits later.
What we are told is true.
But we are not told the price that we will have to pay for our years of education. We are never told the price that society expects us to pay in return for having our lives shaped and improved.
To understand the potential costs to your spirit and your soul you must first understand the purpose of the education society is offering you. You must understand what society stands to gain from the deal you are being offered. Sadly, nothing that society offers you ever comes free. An education is certainly no exception. The main reason society offers to educate you is to prepare you for work. Society doesn’t want to educate you so that you become a more thoughtful, more creative or wiser person. What would be the point of that? Society doesn’t want to broaden your horizons or enhance your sense of vision. Society doesn’t want to instil passion in you (that can be troublesome and inconvenient) and it doesn’t want you to know how to think for yourself (that can be costly and disruptive).
What society really wants is obedience.
Society, the social structure which we have created but which has now acquired a strength and a force of its own (inspired by its own need to survive) values obedience highly and rewards the obedient more than any other group. Society knows that the obedient will work hard without question. Society knows that the obedient can be relied upon to do work that is dull, repetitive and possibly even dangerous. Society knows that the obedient are unlikely to be troubled by spiritual or moral fears. Society knows that the obedient will fit neatly into whatever hierarchy may exist and society knows that the obedient will put loyalty above honesty and integrity. Society will always reward those who are obedient because that shows other people the value of obedience! If you become obedient then you will also become a good and reliable customer. You will buy things that you don’t need and so help society to evolve and stay strong. You will accept shoddy workmanship and unreliability without complaint. You will accept new fashions as necessary and you will buy new clothes and new car when society wants you to buy these things – not when you need them. The obedient customer is a passive customer and the passive customer is the best customer.
Think back to your own education and you’ll see how important obedience was. Any course which involves a textbook and a teacher and concludes with an examination of some sort is designed to prevent thought and to encourage blind obedience. The educational system prepares you for a life in a meritocracy where nothing is more meritorious than silent obedience.
If you were a good student then you will have been rewarded.
If your education was successful – on society’s terms – then you will have been offered choices that marked you for life. Whatever profession you chose to follow society will have taught you to feel special. You will have been encouraged to believe that you are superior to all those who do not have your own special skills. You will have been taught to feel contempt for those who do not have your authority. You will have been taught prejudices rather than truths.
You must remember that the aim of a modern education is to harness the minds of the imaginative or potentially disruptive. Such individuals are dangerous to a smooth running society. Society’s schoolteachers are prepared and willing to manipulate the minds of the young because that is what society expects them to do in return for their own status in society. Everything is designed to help produce a neat and layered world.
The price you pay for your education is a high one. And the more successful your education is in society’s terms (and the higher your position in the meritocracy) the greater the price you must pay. You will be marked for life. Your choices – or the choices that society helped you to make – will have strictly defined the boundaries of your life. You may be better rewarded (in material terms) than many of those who were less capable of satisfying the system but the price you pay will be higher too. The price you pay for educational success is intellectual constraint. You pay for your success with your freedom. You pay for your success with guilt, frustration, dissatisfaction and boredom.
The modern educational system is designed to support the structure of our society but it is also a major force in the development of toxic stress.
The essay above is taken from Vernon Coleman’s book `Toxic Stress’. To purchase a copy CLICK HERE
Copyright Vernon Coleman February 2025
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