What is the point in school? In this article, Phoenix and Aria expose the hidden purpose of school as a tool for social-conditioning. They also describe their own experiences of being harassed in the classroom.

This article is a transcript of a recorded conversation between Aria and Phoenix. If you would prefer to listen to the audio-recording on which this transcript is based, you can download a zip file containing the original audio file by clicking here. The transcript below is lightly edited for legibility, and to add new information.

ARIA: Do you feel like schools are inherently abusive, because of the power-dynamic between student and teacher?

PHOENIX: The social architecture of a school invites the exploitation of children because, in a classroom, you have a bunch of students who are overlooked by a teacher who sits at the front of a class and issues instructions. Teaching is theater-acting for adults who couldn't hold an audience that wasn't forced to listen.

I agree with those people who argue that school, although it looks like an educational system, is not an educational system. The content appears to be ‘educational’ but the system in which the content is delivered is designed to condition children into compliance.

School is primarily designed to condition citizens into following orders and respecting an ‘authority’. School is designed to produce submissive, weak, unquestioning citizens. It's a open-prison system.

ARIA: The system is very harmful because you’re praised and supported if you follow orders, and follow what the teacher is saying. This is not a good skill for survival in the world. It’s a good skill for keeping powerful people in power. But it’s not a good skill if you want to change anything.

In an optimal school, teachers would encourage children to question, and to think, and not to necessarily follow what the teacher is saying.

I remember the exams we had to take. It was just so obvious to me that there was no point in me expressing anything that I really thought. I realized at that point: The best way to get through these exams is to say exactly what the teacher thinks. Which I did.

Students do very well in exams if they just agree with what the teacher tells them to think. It’s not a useful skill at all. Blindly following-orders leads to distasters.

PHOENIX: School is quite a strange phenomenon. Implicit in the structure of a school is the idea that the teachers know what’s going on here — on planet Earth — and they’re going to tell the children what’s going on.

Except: What have the adults done? At the point at which I arrived at school what had the adults done? The adults had blasted a hole in the ozone layer; the adults had created a social context in which we now know that many members of the government were sexually abusing children en-masse.

We know that the BBC was sexually abusing children en-masse. There were also multiple-invasions of foreign countries for nothing more than resource acquisition.

Only a few decades before I arrived in the British education system, there had been World War II in which almost everyone on the planet decided to fight each other. And yet, when I arrived in the school building, I was given the impression that, ‘We know what’s going on and we’re going to tell you children what’s going on.’

As a kid, however, I just thought: Who are you people? What possible credentials do you have to tell me anything? You know nothing. You almost destroyed yourselves in a war; the school is full of pedophiles; the economy is exploiting people; the Prime Minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher was actively enabling the sexual abuse of children by many of her ministers. What possible thing could these adults have to teach?

I expect children today arrive in school and think: "Okay, so you teachers are going to tell me about how the world works and then I’ll know? Because you’ve designed an economic system that is so corrupt that just one percent of people have the majority of the wealth? And now I’m going to sit in a chair, in front of you, in a room, and you, the teacher, are going to tell me how the world works?"

It’s the most absurd proposition I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe schools still exist. I don’t understand the purpose in them.

I think it would be a better idea to give children space and time to find their own interests. Then, provide children with research material, and access to people who are doing those things: Engineers; Mathematicians; Scientists. Allow children to be exposed to the true nature of things; the physicality of the world.

Not this strange system we have now where a 'teacher', sits in front of children and tells them what the world is, and what to do. It’s very, very perverse. It's nothing but mind-control.

What do you think about that dramatic and forthright rant?

ARIA: I think there are nuances to it. I don’t think you can say that all teachers are like that. On the whole, it’s true that adults have done that to the world. But that’s not to say you can blame all teachers. I think it’s a shared responsibility among all professions.

PHOENIX: I don’t particularly blame teachers for all the horrors of the world. I think it’s more of a problem with adults in general. And this whole idea that adults are going to teach a child anything. I think children have so much to teach adults.

ARIA: I’m seeing how we have different opinions. Because I have had positive teachers and that makes a massive difference: The fact that I had teachers that cared. That’s why I have a slightly different viewpoint. But I also see how these things are all interlinked and I would much prefer a free-school system. I definitely feel like children have so much to teach adults.

PHOENIX: I would like to set up some schools where adults have to attend. In these schools, children will tell adults how they feel, and what they think is going on. Most adults have become deeply locked into a fixed pattern of behaviour. Many adults are obsessed with money and power and these things. They have completely lost the plot.

Obviously, my view is rather more radical than Aria's, but my view is: Abolish the school system entirely and use the buildings as adult-education centres. Adults can visit the buildings and children can explain to them the challenges that children face, and the problems that children experience in this world.

By the time most people have become an adult, they have become completely numbed to the reality that they live in. Everything that was difficult and abusive for them, when they were children, has become such a part of their everyday life that they don’t recognize that it exists anymore. They are trapped in a weird fishbowl.

I can talk a bit more about a very strange experience I had at school which demonstrates the general stupidity of the school system: It generally teaches what has already happened, and it doesn’t teach it very well.

For example, at the time I was at school, computers had only just begun to become popular. People had only just begun to get interested in them in a big way. Computers were quite new to the school system and no one really knew what computing would become in the future. I remember I was very interested in computers and I spent a lot of time around computers.

At the time, it wasn’t obvious to adults that computers would be the future of our world; that computers would be at the very heart of every profession that we know.

I remember I had this school report from, funnily enough, a religious-instruction teacher, who said something like, ""Because this subject does not involve computers, [Phoenix] can not see much point to it."

The implication was that somehow my interest in computers wasn’t productive; that it was a distraction from school work. And yet, it was the very thing that would be central to the future of humanity. So, I feel like my instinct was correct. And so many children’s instincts must be correct.

And yet many children are told by these 'teachers', who are essentially living in the past; who are dragging these ancient books out of the past; and demanding that we apply them to the present; what is and is not relevant.

It also didn’t help me that the computer teacher, called Mr Anderson, at King's House School, was sexually abusing me and other children. That was a spanner in the works as well. But it also felt like, on top of that, so many people suggested I was distracting myself with computers because they were just a toy. That’s the inherent madness of the school system.

I can imagine, today, that if a child gets interested in whatever is coming up next they will sabotage his interests too.

ARIA: They do that all the time with the arts as well. I remember that I was completely put off art at school. I had a terrible art teacher. That was my worst subject when I was fourteen to sixteen-years-old.

I struggled so much with it because art was really important to me. In art, I was communicating a lot about the abuse. I would draw things like a Russian doll that was crying. I remember drawing two girls who were divided: The divided self. Symbolizing how much pain and suffering I was going through.

At one point, I spent five hours on a drawing that was important to me. Then, the art teacher gave me a critique, saying, "You should have done this another way." Then I burst into tears because it felt like it was so important to me but, at the same time, I felt so frustrated with the subject because I wasn’t able to express myself the way that I wanted.

Because I was still being abused so much, I was not able to be communicate what was happening in words. I didn’t feel able to express myself though art because the teacher did not recognize or support me in any way. In fact, she completely hindered me. After this experience with the teacher, I stopped drawing for seven years.

PHOENIX: How old were you at the time?

ARIA: Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.

PHOENIX: It’s kind of amazing isn’t it? The extent to which some of these teachers put down students, or deter them from their paths. You know music critics? They don’t really play anything or do anything, they just sit in room and type reviews, often quite acidic, negative reviews of peoples’ work; of other peoples' music.

I think there’s a fair number of teachers who do that. I don’t think it’s fair to say all teachers. I did actually have one good teacher.

But yet, so many teachers were basically critics. I feel that so much of the education system is filled with theatre, and music, and art critics who just criticize everything a kid does so that when they emerge from the other end of the system, they have such an internal monologue of detrimental, angry, suppressive voices telling them: This isn’t good enough, or this isn’t quite right, that it’s very hard for them to break free from all those negative messages.

At my primary school, I was about eight years old and I was in a recorder lesson, and I was told to leave the recorder lesson and not to come back because I didn’t have any musical talent. It had quite a big effect on me. Obviously, now I am a musician. I play a number of different instruments and have done professionally. It’s strange to think: How many children’s futures have been destroyed by one of these theatre critics in a school.

ARIA: It’s a bit strange to base everything on this one test. There’s a lot of that: Putting people into categories of how well they can do all the time.

PHOENIX: I had another report, which I’ll put up on the website, from an English teacher. I was eleven-years-old at the time. And the English teacher in his report says that, as a result of my approach to the subject, I’m playing a dangerous game. I was just thinking: I was eleven-years-old. I was playing a dangerous game? I don’t think so. I think I was probably just exploring the world of language.

It really confuses me, the extent to which these teachers reacted to the work of their students. As if they were art critics for the New York Times or something. I mean, I have problems with the art critics for the New York Times, but to sit in a school and start critiquing children as if they are Andy Warhol or Van Gogh or something. What are you doing? Why are teachers subjecting these children to such harsh criticism at a stage at which the children should be exploring, without constant assessment.

If there’s one stage in life at which we should not be assessed; at which we shouldn’t be critiqued; at which we should be given freedom to explore. It’s as kids. Except, what has society done? It’s decided that this is the time at which we will critique citizens the most.

Childhood is the time at which the 'education' system will assess you the most. It will examine you the most as a child. It will determine, through a series of weird, mechanical processes, based on standardized testing, whether or not you are acceptable to The State. I think it’s disgusting.

ARIA: I remember, one teacher that I had for math, in particular. We used to have to read out our grades. Once I got 8 out of 20 in some test and I remember the teacher looking at me and asking, "Why?" In such a horrible way. It was terrifying. I felt like I’d done something so wrong. There’s so much blame put on you.

We had a science teacher who would just tell us all the answers to all the questions. We would just copy her written answers for our exam. She was more interested in keeping up the appearance of us doing well than teaching us anything.

PHOENIX: In exams at school, when the exam results came out they’d put them on a big list on the wall. All the children would gather around and you’d see where you were placed in the class. If you were in the lowest 25th per cent of the class, you’d have this sense, which I often did, of impending tragedy. Violence, in fact. When I scored badly at school, at home I would be beaten. Or I would have things taken away from me, or I would be excluded.

There was a threat looming over me constantly in terms of performing. It’s such a strange thing to be asking a young human being to do: To constantly perform to meet some abstract measurement, devised by — in my experience — people who were pedophiles. Essentially, at my school, a group of pedophiles were designing tests for children and then ranking them according to how good they thought those children were..

What a strange, and corrupt, and malicious system. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Aside from the fact they were pedophiles, and aside from the fact that standardized-testing is a perverse, and mad, and completely largely-irrelevant system. The things they were testing for had absolutely no relevance to the reality in which I would live later.

For example, there were absolutely no exams for computing. I’m not saying there should be exams, but what a strange system: To determine; based on a certain number of abstract points; designated by a system designed by, essentially, madmen; to then have a projected-idea of the success of that child; and yet to exclude the most fundamental subject that our reality, and our future, would consist. Which is: The microcomputer.

The computer permeates every aspect of our existence. It didn’t exist on those tests. And, yet, at the time, we were told that those tests indicated our future success.

I do not understand exams. Personally, and I have run several businesses, I would never employ someone based on their exam results; based on a standardized test. Because I know how it works. You jam your head full of facts a few weeks before the exam, in most cases, and then you just vomit it all out onto the paper.

Exams are no indication of someone’s ability to do something. Whenever I have hired someone in the companies that I’ve worked for, it’s been on the basis of who they are, and what they can do in terms of practical things. I’m not interested in what a piece of paper says. Because I know that behind that piece of paper is series of very Machiavellian and twisted individuals, often. With some exceptions.

What do you feel about tests?

ARIA: I remember being so scared of failure and what my teachers would say about me. I used to refuse to go to the parent-teacher evenings because I was so scared that they would say something bad about me. I remember being so terrified of failing or not getting the result I wanted. I used to cry and I used to be so upset, and I felt like the world had ended.

PHOENIX: You felt, as a kid, that there was some deep significance to the test results and the reports the teachers were giving you?

ARIA: I felt that, if I did badly, it meant I was a failure. It’s something that I still struggle with. If something goes badly for me, I automatically blame myself: I’m bad; I’ve done something wrong; I’m not good enough.

PHOENIX: I think that’s a problem with schools. They give children a constant sense of not being good enough. If you’re at the lower-range of the testing scale, you feel like you’re not good enough. If you’re at the higher-range, you feel like you’re on this perilous precipice on some mountain, and that you might fall off at any point and then all self-worth will disappear.

It’s very strange to rank people by these numbers or some sort of numbering system. It doesn’t make sense. We’re all so different and unique in so many different ways. A certain skillset, which might be very valued in this moment in time, might be completely useless in a few years.

For example, Steve Jobs. I feel that, had he been born sixty-years before, most of his skillset, in terms of his expertise in micro-computing and the application of technology may well have been completely useless.

There are so many people working, in so many fields today, that, sixty or a hundred-years ago, their area of expertise would not have existed.

ARIA: There’s so much importance placed on measuring everything and grading things. It’s very strange because that just permeates your thinking throughout life. It’s strange because, actually, the most important things, the most valuable things, cannot be measured. They cannot be put into that value system. They cannot be given a number or a grade.

It’s weird how society encourages the pursuit of things that we can measure and see, when they’re not even the most valuable or important things to us.

PHOENIX: I used to be part of this chamber choir at King’s House School. And it was a very famous chamber choir that used to tour around London. We used to sing in the Royal Festival Hall. We used to sing in different hotels in London. We used to be hired by movie companies to sing on different films.

One of the boys that I sung with in the choir, sung on the soundtrack to a Steven Spielberg film. We sung for different pop-stars. When the choir was toured around. Boys were taken by people in different hotels and sexually abused. This seemed to be a way in which the school did two things: One thing that it did is that it increased its perceived prestige. So, it allowed itself to be seen in these rich and elite public spaces, and to get credit for that.

I never saw any money from that. So the school used to send choirboys out and they used to exploit them. They used to exploit our work. Effectively, it was child-labor. So King’s House School send us out in a choir as child-labor. They received profit from that, they exploited us. They then sexually exploited us at different hotels, allowing us to be sexually exploited.

They also supplied choirboys to Cliff Richard for his music video and for his pop-song. I think it’s very disturbing what went on in that choir. I think it’s very disturbing that we were exploited, financially. I think it’s very disturbing that were were exploited sexually. I think it’s very disturbing that the school decided that they were going to use us as an external advertising campaign.

I think it’s very disturbing the connections between that choir and many elite members of society, including people like Cliff Richard and Steven Spielberg. I think that’s very disturbing.

Phoenix Kaspian has reported extensively on abuse by King's House School. in Richmond. in several other articles, the first of which you can read here.