School Anarchology: (2/6) Anarchoracy as an Alternative to Democracy – The School as the First Official Hub for Practicing Anarchoracy

 School Anarchology: (2/6) 

Anarchoracy as an Alternative to Democracy – The School as the First Official Hub for Practicing Anarchoracy

✍️ Mahmoud Sadeghi Janbahan

Translated with the assistance of ChatGPT

✅ The School as the Official Base of Anarchoracy

From its very first stages to its final ones, school represents the most significant organized system a child encounters after the family. Unlike the family, this environment possesses both a material and relational structure of its own, one that engages the child with rules and relations beyond the familial sphere. In the modern era, entry into this institutional world occurs at increasingly younger ages. The child’s experience here transcends learning literacy, mathematics, or science; what is truly at stake is his or her confrontation with structures of power. In its traditional form, the school functions as a reproducer of hierarchical order, stretching from the principal and teachers down to the students. Thus, the most fundamental lesson children internalize in school is not knowledge itself, but obedience to higher authority and acceptance of a predetermined order.

From the perspective of School Anarchology, the educational system in its current form (even in its best versions) is nothing but the institutionalization of “the rule of people over people.” It conditions children to accept rules already established in society. The product of such a system is not free individuals, but compliant ones: obedient followers of codified laws, carriers of official values, subjects aligned with dominant norms — “good citizens,” loyal employees, and professionals devoted to the prevailing logic. This is precisely the logic that anarchoracy seeks to question and dismantle.

If society is organized through hierarchical domination, then school becomes the primary hub for producing and reproducing this domination. From the outset, the child is placed within a network of power relations that habituates them to accept authority from above and reproduce it at lower levels. Hence, school is not merely a site of transmitting knowledge and skills, but an ideological apparatus whose main function is to perpetuate the existing political and social order.

By contrast, if a society intends to move toward anarchoratic life, it must necessarily transform the school into the first base of this shift. Such a school would replace the teaching of obedience with the practice of emancipation, hierarchy with coexistence on equal terms, and the reproduction of domination with the cultivation of creativity, autonomy, and critical capacities in children. Only in this way can the school cease to be a tool of continuity and instead become a driving force of social transformation.

✅ The School as a “Micro-Society”

The school is not merely an institution preparing children for the future; it is itself a small, real society in which power relations, cooperation, exclusion, and discrimination are lived and experienced daily. In fact, what takes shape in the school is a condensed reflection of the broader social model. Within this “micro-society,” the child learns not only academic skills but also how to live with others, how to confront power, and how to understand justice and equality.

Thus, transforming the school is not just about reforming an educational institution, but about reshaping social patterns on a micro-scale. A school designed on the basis of anarchoracy becomes a “pilot model” of a society without domination. In such a school, hierarchies of authority are replaced with horizontal relations, and all members — teachers, students, and families — participate equally in decision-making processes.

Here, the school turns into a site where freedom, autonomy, and equal coexistence are lived in practice. Instead of being passive recipients of knowledge, students become conscious and responsible agents. Teachers, rather than absolute authorities, act as companions and co-learners. Families, too, become active partners in shaping this miniature society. In this way, the anarchoratic school functions as a “social laboratory” where the possibility of life without domination and the practice of equality can be experienced concretely before they are realized on a larger societal scale

✅ Critique of the Authoritarian Model

In the traditional school, the authority of the teacher and principal is absolute and unchallenged. Educational relations are structured around command and obedience, with discipline employed as a tool for control and the homogenization of behavior. In such a system, children learn to be obedient and to recognize their place in hierarchies of power long before they have the chance to experience freedom or cultivate critical thought

This model corresponds precisely to what Michel Foucault called the “disciplinary society”: a space that not only disciplines bodies but also prepares minds to accept diverse forms of domination in social and political life. In this sense, the school produces “docile subjects” who internalize the logic of the dominant order without resistance.

From the standpoint of anarchology, such a model has two destructive consequences: first, the suppression of individual freedom and the denial of autonomous living; second, the marginalization of creativity and the capacity for collective participation. The child is no longer regarded as a free and creative being but as a small cog in the larger machine of power. Thus, instead of serving as a site of empowerment and emancipation, the school becomes a hub of authoritarian reproduction.

✅ The School as the Official Base of Anarchoracy

It follows that school can and must become the first official hub for practicing and realizing anarchoracy. If children learn in school that all voices hold equal value, that no authority is absolute or unquestionable, and that decisions are made through free dialogue and collective participation rather than imposed from above, then the school transcends its traditional role as a transmitter of knowledge. It becomes a space for rehearsing life in a free society.

From this perspective, the transition to anarchoracy is impossible without a radical rethinking of school. Only in an environment where authority is dismantled and horizontal relations are lived can children bring forth their cognitive, ethical, and emotional courage. In such a setting, rebellion against authority is neither suppressed nor criminalized, but rather cultivated as an essential part of growth. This capacity for rebellion is what enables the child to say “no” — to refuse reproduction of the dominant order and to become instead a creator of a new one.

In the end, the anarchoratic school is a space where creativity, justice, and dignity are allowed to flourish. Children within such a system are not mere consumers of knowledge, but conscious, critical, and creative agents capable of transforming the world around them.

Reference:

Sadeghi Janbahan, M. (2025). School Anarchology: (2/6) Anarchoracy as an Alternative to Democracy – The School as the First Official Hub for Practicing Anarchoracy. Retrieved from https://anarchology.blogfa.com and https://anarchology-journal.blogspot.com