The Teddies Review - Dec 2021

you want. It is to “transcend” the obligations and pressures of the world. And yet, a school acts in every moment to repress the freedom of its students. It treats the student as a pawn to move here and there, or as clay to be moulded. In existentialist language, it confines a person to “immanence” - where options are limited and where the very idea of freedom is confined to a box. Choice is fine, so long as it sticks resolutely within the bounds of a finite menu (the “school rules”). For Simone de Beauvoir, in her Ethics of Ambiguity , being forced to live in immanence is an evil prospect. Any person or body that seeks to limit our freedom is committing an immoral act. Were a school or teacher to “force” another person to do something, then they’d be behaving wrongly.

Radical Freedom in an Institution

To be a child is to be led by the hand. It’s to be told that this is what you should do and this is what you should say. A child’s world is reduced to what a parent or caregiver makes of it – where every major choice is filtered through mum and dad. When you have a question, they give you an answer, and that’s the truth of it. When you have a problem, they give you a solution, and everything’s better again. It’s life of contented objecthood. To be a child is to be pushed, carried, and steered – just as an object is. And it’s safe and happy. But then we grow up. Suddenly, the old answers and authority lose their gleam. To become an adult is to feel and enjoy the power of choice. It’s to recognise that a human life is not one of objecthood, but of radical freedom. As a child gets older, the easy and familiar ways are no longer appealing, because they are given and not chosen . So, what happens, then, when this transition from youthful objecthood to adult freedom happens in the middle of an institution like a school? What is it like to enjoy and recognise radical freedom in a world of “wear this”, “go there”, “don’t drink”, and “do your prep”? There’s something nefarious in the fetters a school places on choice. As French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued, to be authentically human is to choose freely the life Struggling against chains

Bad Faith

But this is not the full story, and it’s a disingenuous account of what school is. No school is a prison camp and holding another human against their will is a violation of both the law and their moral right to self- determination. What we often disregard is that every day we have a choice. In any given moment, a student is quite at liberty to walk out the door, to hop