A wide, cinematic digital painting depicting the hidden authoritarianism of public schooling disguised as virtue. In the foreground, a classroom fades into a surreal scene — desks stretch endlessly like prison bars, and fluorescent lights glow cold white above rows of faceless students hunched over identical papers. Their shadows form faint outlines of chains linking one desk to the next. At the front, a public school teacher stands with gentle posture and warm expression, unaware that puppet strings descend subtly from above, connecting to their wrists — symbolizing good intentions manipulated by higher authority. Outside the classroom window, a sunrise glows over a free, natural landscape — mountains, forests, and open skies — contrasting with the sterile, gray interior. The mood should feel thought-provoking, melancholic, and liberating, capturing the theme of well-meaning control versus genuine freedom

Public school teachers get everything wrong about education

ByTC Marti

Most public school teachers believe they’re committing a noble act, and you can’t blame them. But that doesn’t make them wrong in their approach.

I recently wrote a long open letter to my old public school teachers, thanking none of them for their “service.” But that doesn’t mean I thought most of them were bad people.

Instead, about two-thirds of them entered the teaching field because they wanted to educate kids, and that alone is a noble act. Anyone looking to get the best out of kids earns an ‘A’ for effort. But even those two-thirds who thought they were doing good still get an ‘F’ in execution.

Why? Because they bought into the lie that education had to be confined to a classroom unless they gave out a mountain of homework. Still, even homework confines a student to a classroom, even if they’re not physically present in that classroom.

What makes me say that? Because homework gives teachers the power to dictate a student’s life after they leave school for the day. And since public school teachers work for the public sector and, therefore, the State, handing out homework gives the State the means to invade your home every single night.

It’s a form of soft surveillance, because what happened if you perpetually didn’t do your homework? Who did they call? That’s right, they called your parents, asking why you weren’t doing your homework, and what you were really up to.

Public school teachers weren’t your family’s allies

I can’t stress enough that most of these people were good, and believed they were “a force for good.” But when most teachers enter the public sector, they have been trained to align the State with ‘good,’ and anyone resisting the State as ‘evil.’

Even if the kid learned better outside of a classroom setting playing video games, watching sports, reading biographies, and studying from a lay perspective, those teachers didn’t give a damn. If that kid didn’t do their assigned homework assignments, they faced consequences, regardless if they fulfilled their minds with more knowledge and executed more creativity that had nothing to do with homework.

And if the consequences weren’t enough, that was when those teachers, the school, and, in a worst-case scenario, the State, went after those parents. At my school, they would force parents to keep their kids longer for “after school intervention” if they averaged a ‘D’ or lower in any of their classes.

This, in turn, even made grades, not just homework, a means of soft State surveillance. So, in this chain of command, who were the foot soldiers, the arms of the State? Public school teachers. It began with them and how a student performed in their class, even if that student was getting a more fulfilling learning experience outside the classroom and the curriculum.

Good people are easily manipulated

When bad people, like those who are so arrogant that they think they know what’s best for your kid, take power, they must manipulate further to gain support and legitimacy. It’s so easy to cross a good person as a devil in disguise, feed them propaganda for four-plus years that they’re committing a noble act, then sell this intrusion into private family life as ‘for the greater good.’

If there is good news, some teachers ultimately see through the ruse for a multitude of reasons. But for many others, they never see through it. They stay in the system, constantly keeping a notorious close eye on students and report the wayward ones to their bosses.

And they never consider any other way. But, there are other ways, and that’s what the smart ones figure out. Microschools, learning pods, private schools that are free from the state, and homeschooling are just a few of them. Or, maybe they’ll come up with something even more innovative?

One example in a fictional world

The Arcane Prophecy by TC MartiMy young adult fantasy series, Arcane Elemental Academy, boasts some innovation. Yote Diamondback, who holds the starring role in the series, attends an umbrella academy that boasts 32 schools operating under it, and each are in fierce competition with the other for students.

The kicker? Each school offers something different, based on a kid’s learning style and personality. Yote, an ambitious girl with a thirst to prove herself and can grasp an array of styles, ends up in a school called Scorpii, where she notices her peers enjoying themselves. Weird, because she never associated school with fun.

But what made Yote end up at Arcane in the first place? Check out the first three chapters of Book I, The Arcane Prophecy, and you’ll get a slew of insights, plus an intro to the elemental magical system, and what Yote’s life was like before she ventured to Arcane.

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