Few days ago, I came across an illustration posted by Robby Berson on Instagram, an elephant and a rabbit in conversation. The elephant asks, “What do you miss most?” and the rabbit replies, “The way I viewed the world before I knew too much about it.” Beneath the image, a caption read: “The world runs on lies, and obedience keeps it that way.” A lingering rage that has lived in the corners of my mind for years stirred.
I realized that a large part of my anger, the kind that shapes how I see authority, how I speak (or don’t), how I trust myself, is rooted in my experience with education. More precisely, in how I gave my entire childhood to it, wholeheartedly, diligently, even obsessively, only to realize, years later, that what we call “education” never really taught me how to be educated. It taught me how to obey in a world that needs critically outspoken people to challenge the system in the name of justice.
I was taught to follow instructions without question, to accept what I was told as truth, and to stay within the limits of the curriculum. I was told that good students behave, that curiosity is a distraction, and that thinking beyond the syllabus is “not appropriate for your level.” I remember when I had asked a teacher a genuine question that I was truly curious about, still connected to the lesson but not part of the teaching materials. Rather than being encouraged, I was shut down. Told not to ask things beyond what I could “understand.” I wasn’t trying to challenge anyone, I was just wondering. And in that moment, I began to understand that school wasn’t a place for wondering. It was a place for complying.
Losing Myself in a System That Didn’t See Me
Looking back, most of my young life was consumed by school. If I wasn’t sitting in a classroom, I was in tutoring or hunched over books trying to do better. There was little room left for joy, for exploration, for figuring out what I actually loved. There was no space to imagine a life beyond grades and ranks. That loss of time, of wonder, of myself, still hurts.
What Real Education Should Look Like
What breaks my heart is that education, in theory, should be one of the most transformative forces in a person’s life. It should help us think critically, ask better questions, and see the world with curiosity and courage. In a healthy democracy, schools are meant to be the foundation of informed citizenship, a place where we learn not only how the world works, but how to change it for the better. And yet, that’s not what I experienced.
The System Wasn’t Broken. It Was Built This Way.
Instead, I was shaped by a system that rewarded obedience over originality, silence over inquiry, and memorization over meaning. The more I learn about how deeply education systems are tied to preserving outdated power structures, the more I realize that blind obedience isn’t a side effect. It’s the point, one that has been set up deliberately by the authority.
I’ve come to believe that what I went through wasn’t just a flawed version of school, but it was a kind of fascist education. One that isn’t designed to teach, but to control. By erasing diverse voices from history, narrowing the scope of critical thought, and punishing students who deviate from the script, it creates a version of learning that’s not neutral. It’s ideological. It exists to preserve hierarchies, not challenge them. And that terrifies me.
Because obedience without questioning, without reflection, without connection to one’s inner voice. It breaks students. It kills something in us that’s vital for life: the courage to think for ourselves.
Even the Enforcers Were Once Victims
What’s even more painful is realizing that many of the adults who shut us down didn’t even mean to cause harm. The ones who told us to stop asking, to stop being “difficult,” were often just repeating what they’d been taught. They were trained to believe that obedience is virtue, that discipline is more important than dialogue, and that questions are threats.
Trying to Unlearn the Silence School Taught Me
When you raise a generation to fall in line, you end up with a generation that doesn’t know how to stand up. You raise people who can’t speak truth, who hesitate to push back, who shrink themselves to fit systems that were never built for them in the first place.
We are being taught to be quiet in a world that desperately needs voices. And I, for one, am still trying to unlearn the silence.
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