A group of fish is defined as a school. The individuals are collectively doing the same thing. Humans follow the same pattern up to this point: in school they do what everyone else around them is doing. However, school defined for humans is different from school defined for fish because of the things which are expected of humans by other humans. Fish all do the same thing and are expected to do the same thing by their fellow fish, but humans have diversified roles. The division of roles is responsible for the fact that human school is structured differently from fish school.
School and its cousin, class, are inseperable. Class is synonymous with caste, rank, lecture, course, grade and the state of being proper. Fish that coexist in schools only have one class in terms of all of these synonyms, therefore the corpus of fish is united. On the other hand, humans are schooled progressively, so the corpus of humans is necessarily disunited to make gradation possible. In understanding the role of school in human society, one must first understand the role of class structure in society. Exactly why did humans diversify?
An evolutionary thesis for this question is that at some point, certain humans gained a greater degree of physical prowess, superior creativity (a bigger brain, really) and/or the use of tools, including fire. Craig B. Stanford explains the beginnings of this concept:
“Man the Hunter argued in part that human brain size and cognitive skills were enhanced through a long evolutionary history pursuing prey, with all the communication and coordination skills that hunting may place at a premium. This is partly correct; social hunting does place a premium on intelligence. The premium is exacted, however, in the realm of the sharing, control, and distribution of meat after a kill rather than in the pursuit of the prey. In the doling out of the meat we see signs of strategizing and politicking that go far beyond those seen in predatory behavior.” (1)
In other words, the unbalance of power that exists today is a result of natural conditions. By relation, roles auxilliary to survival would have risen from two aspects of the group hunt. The first condition is the exclusion of some members of the corpus, which creates a population of "others" that will eventually develop into an excess labor pool, but they want to survive as well, which is why they trade their labor. The second condition is the contol exerted over resources by the dominant group. Class is therefore a product of the survival of "excess people" and the concept that those people deserve survival, as opposed to elimination, which is what happens "excess fish." In that sense, school is where the unnecessary go to make themselves useful.
School at every level does one thing: it teaches individuals to take and appropriately respond to instructions (to interact with society). Instruction is a form of communications that induces action. Instructional messages are received and interpreted; as always the ideal result of communication is shared understanding. Therefore, school is practice for doing something for another in return for something that another has power over.
In the same sense, school parallels life, often as a matter of convenience to those who have structured it. It is no secret that high school is vocational training. For instance, factory workers are treated effectively like high school children. They are allotted breaks, are penalized for absenteeism, and are made to answer to a power that they will never hold. In terms of higher education, there is a vastly greater deal of respect, freedom and equality. Classes have magically transformed into often non-mandatory, “Class Meetings,” and if you want authority, it only takes three extra years. This higher education, as it is often called, is nothing more than preparation for higher paying jobs and any “work, ”“investment” or “sacrifice” that might be a part of it are thought to somehow justify this higher pay. In that way, school is the gateway to success, so long as success is defined as financial gain. Money implies one’s ability to exert control upon society.
By reduction, school is a place that has been created to place people into society by teaching them how to think like everybody else for the purpose of serving those who have more resources than oneself in order to obtain more resources than everybody else.
(1) The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior. Chapter 7, pg. 200. 1999. Princeton University Press. New Jersey. http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/books/stanford/
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