Mistakenly, a curfewed school is regarded as the best educational institution that churns out “disciplined” students. A principal who comports himself as a dictatorial administrator and a teacher who is morbidly sensitive even to a pin drop in a classroom are placed on a high pedestal in educational circles, as they, to get quantified results of higher grades, maintain a pall of fear and intimidation over students. Given the prevalent metrics of success in our education system, they succeed in their mission but at the cost of creativity and ingenuity.

School formalism requires nothing but compliance without any skosh of delay and demur. Even if a teacher defying the status quo dares stir the slumbering minds, the curriculum, examination system and his job security don’t give him any leeway to exercise the demands of his calling. Ultimately, pedagogy is orphaned of intellectual autonomy. Acquiescence to totalitarian authority at schools replaces the learning for intellectual growth with what John Holt calls ‘the charade of learning’. The terrorising authority spawns the fear of failure, of appearing stupid, of ridicule by peers and teachers, of rejection, and of initiatives being thwarted. Education under fear will teach students not how to think and express but how to hide. In his essay, Education and Discipline, Bertrand Russell writes: “The submissive lose initiative, both in thought and action; moreover, the anger generated by the feeling of being thwarted tends to find an outlet in bullying those who are weaker.”

In our schools, a teacher plays an Orwellian Big Brother, sucking every ounce of liberty from the learners. A teacher can never be wrong: he has to be agreed with. Teacher approval decides what is wrong or what is right. Bertrand Russell writes in his essay, Functions of a Teacher: “… he is expected, in totalitarian countries, not to employ the methods which he thinks most likely to achieve the scholastic result, but to instill fear, subservience, and blind obedience by demanding unquestioned submission to his authority.” James Callaghan, a former Prime Minister of Great Britain, said in a major speech on education that what traditional education produces are “round pegs for round holes”.

Historically, formal schooling gained importance during the Industrial Revolution to prepare an educated labour force. The sole aim of the schools was to inculcate obsequious compliance in children who were expected to be a compliant workforce for industries. Administration of instruction through fear in schools is a colonial palimpsest. In Education and Discipline, Russell warns: “An unduly authoritative education turns the pupils into timid tyrants, incapable of either claiming or tolerating originality in word or deed.”

When schooling became synonymous with a coercive force too potent and controlling for young and hyperactive minds, they started dropping out. However, some pursued independent learning. Bypassing the restrictive formalism of schools, they surpassed their schooled counterparts on the intellectual landscape. The voices supporting unschooling, like that of John Holt, started challenging the role of schools. He felt that school is ‘a place where children learn to be stupid’. He started a movement against schools and wrote 11 books in total on unschooling. How Children Fail (1964) and How Children Learn (1967) gave parents the idea of unschooling as an alternative learning method. Unschooling — a subset of homeschooling and a practice of self-driven informal learning lesson-free and curriculum-free — requires immersing learners in exploration of activities outside the school boundary walls.

But, in developing countries like Pakistan, where parental literacy is insufficient, financial constraints deprioritise education and education systems are run on quantified results, unschooling is an alien concept. The unavailability of any alternative to schooling for learning results in a steep rise in the dropout rate. What the parents are left with is the hope that schooling must be transformed from academic policing to holistic educational nourishment. It’s the learners’ basic right that education must be hands-on and heuristic — feasible only in a fear-free milieu.